Pisa 2015 reading test item parameters across language groups: A measurement invariance study with binary variables*

Abstract

Large-scale international assessments, including PISA, might be useful for countries to receive feedback on their education systems. Measurement invariance studies are one of the active research areas for these assessments, especially cross-cultural and linguistic comparability have attracted attention. PISA questions are prepared in the English language, and students from many countries answer the translated form. In this respect, the purpose of our study is to investigate whether there is a measurement invariance problem across native English and non-native English speaker groups in the PISA-2015 reading skills subtest. The study sample included students from Canada, the USA, and the UK as the native speaker group and students from Japan, Thailand, and Turkey as the non-native speaker group. Measurement invariance studies taking into account the binary structure of the data set for these two groups revealed that eight of the twenty-eight items in the PISA-2015 reading skills test had possible limitations in equivalence.