Content Analysis of Gender Differential Item Functioning of Mathematics Items among Secondary Students in an Eastern Chinese Culture

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-494-5_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Differential Item Functioning; Gender; Mathematics; Mantel-Haenszel chi-square method; Welch t-test

Abstract

This study reports on preliminary findings of gender differential item functioning (DIF) in an Eastern school culture, which is known for ‘special’ teaching approaches and successful mathematics learning that produces impressive mathematics results. This study aimed to identify mathematics items that function differently across gender groups in coeducational schools and examine the characteristics of the DIF mathematics items. A total of 63 boys and 55 girls in Grade Eight were selected from an Eastern school culture for the preliminary study. The software WINSTEPSwas used to conduct DIF analysis. Items were flagged for DIF by using Mantel-Haenszel chi-square method and Welch t statistics with boys forming the reference group and girls forming the focal group. Some 12 computation and 12-word problem items from the grade eight. Word problem items were distinguished as items that are set in real-world context. Findings revealed that both methods flagged three common DIF items, of which one was a computation and two were word problem items. The Welch t-test flagged an additional computation item, which was undetected by the Mantel-Haenszel chi-square method. The computation item exhibited moderate DIF and favoured girls, while the word problem items exhibited large DIF, of which one item each favoured each gender group. These DIF items were from the Number domain from the topics involving decimal number, measurement, and percentage. While the computation item assessed the lower order thinking skills in the cognitive domain of Knowing, the word problem items assessed the cognitive domain of Applying. This initial exploration suggests that items that have more language load is more likely to function differently between the gender groups and that items that assess higher-order thinking skills favour boys, while items that assess lower-order thinking skills such as knowing and solving routine questions favour girls.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - S. Kanageswari Suppiah Shanmugam
AU  - Siti Noor Ismail
AU  - Arsaythamby Veloo
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/08/22
TI  - Content Analysis of Gender Differential Item Functioning of Mathematics Items among Secondary Students in an Eastern Chinese Culture
BT  - Proceedings of the Pacific-Rim Objective Measurement Symposium (PROMS 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 161
EP  - 182
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-494-5_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-494-5_10
ID  - Shanmugam2024
ER  -