On an item-by-item basis each participant was asked to express the item in his or her own words which also provided interpretations for items that were problematic in translation.
They suggest that a systematic mechanism to interpret DIF results is required and that despite the lack of specificity for the interpretation of items exhibiting DIF, the process of checking for its existence should not be ignored.
Differences were more relevant for the interpretation of items 7, 12 and 13, which were slightly more difficult to endorse for female than male subjects were.
This showed that processing implicature encoded through conventionalized linguistic forms was more effortful than processing the other two types of implicature, leading to less accurate meaning interpretations for Lin items than for Dis and Non items.
Davis [ 42] states that proxy-discordance is due to differences in parent's and children's response styles, interpretation of items, and reasons for answering.
The interviewer observed and probed the child for meaning and interpretation of items as well as noting the level of difficulty in selecting a response (Lessler and Sirken 1985, Presser and Blair 1994, Blair and Srinath 2008).
After rotation a 2 factor interpretation for the 9 items was clear, with 4 items capturing physical health (physical, activity, pain, and energy days) and 3 items capturing mental health (mental, depression, and anxiety days).
The questionnaire was pilot tested for interpretation of item construct and importance of content among a group of junior and senior doctors attending a standard course on learning and teaching.
In many cases, multiple interpretations for textual items are possible and the boundaries between the categories are not always clear-cut.
Even though exact definitions for all terms and classifications are given, problems still arise in interpretation of items and fields in the questionnaire.
