Differential Item Functioning of Persian Adaptation of English Writing Apprehension Test

The present study aimed at investigating differential item functioning of the Persian adaptation of English Writing Apprehension Test containing 26 items against gender among Iranian EFL learners and examining the validity and reliability of this scale through the Rasch model. The original English Writing Apprehension Test was translated into Persian and backtranslated into English. The Persian adaptation of this scale was administered to 188 males and 312 females from different English institutes. They ranged in age from 15 to 20. Collected data was fed in the Winsteps Software and analyzed through Rasch analysis. The results of the study showed an item reliability of .88 and person reliability of .82. Moreover, all the 26 items of the scale had appropriate level of infit MNSQ, indicating and confirming the unidimensionality and validity of the scale. Further analysis of the each item of the scale by checking item characteristic curves revealed that all of the 26 items correspond to model expectation and fit the Rasch model. Alsoamong the 26 items, only three items exhibited DIF against gender

کلیدواژه ها:

Differential item functioning ، English Writing Apprehension Test ، Rasch model ، reliability ، validity ، unidimentionality