Investigating the differential item functioning of a PIRLS Literacy 2016 text across three languages

This study forms part of a larger (Roux, 2020), which looked at the equivalence literary text across English, Afrikaans, and isiZulu from Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). PIRLS is large-scale reading comprehension assessment that assesses Grade 4 students' literacy achievement. 2016 results for South African students indicated poor performance comprehension, with approximately eight out 10 who could not read meaning. Descriptive statistics led to Rasch analysis, was conducted using data. Even though analysis differential item functioning three languages this specific passage, there no universal discrimination against one particular language. By conducting functioning, it possible determine whether selected had metric equivalence, other words, test questions were similar difficulty languages.