Statement of Research

In the field of psychometrics, there is increasing interest in the evaluation of fairness in standardized tests. Differential item functioning (DIF) is a phenomenon observed when two groups of respondents have different response patterns. My dissertation work was motivated by an analysis of DIF using a two-tier full-information item factor analysis model. This particular factor analysis model provides deep analysis of the latent variable of each respondent. Since existing methodologies do not provide analysis of this nature, I developed a new model to divide the latent variable into primary dimensions and specific dimensions.