Identification of differential item functioning by logistic regression: application to intellectual disability data

The purpose of this talk is to briefly present the logistic regression procedure to identify differential itm functioning (DIF) in psychometrics, and to illustrate the method on a practical data set about intellectual disability. DIF is an important research fi eld and many statistical methods have been developed in this framework. Logistic regression has the asset of not being based on item response models, and it can detect both uniform and nonuniform DIF. In addition, it can be applied to the comparison of more than two groups. This method is illustrated by comparing two groups of French pupils, one group of normal ability students and one group with intellectually disabled students. Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices test is assigned and DIF is investigated between the two groups. It is concluded that none of the items can be flagged as functioning differently.