Differential Item Functioning of the test subjects in the English language course administered to students of Mu'tah University

Abstract

This study aimed to detect the Differential Item Functioning of the test subjects in the English language course administered to the students of Mu'tah University. In terms of: gender)male and female( and academic specialization (scientific and literary) by using two methods: the difficulty parameter difference )b( method and the Mantell - Haenzel )MH( method.The total items of the English Language test were 25 The study sample according to gender and specialization of academic who responded to the joint test model consisted of )380( students. The analysis was used to reveal the Differential Item Functioning Below are some of the most prominent findings: -)3( items showed Differential Item Functioning for the gender variable using the difficulty (b) parameter difference methodin favor of females, as shown )18( items differential Functioning for the specialization academic variable and all them in favor of the scientific branch. -)5( items showed Differential Item Functioning, using the Mantell – Haenzel method concerning for the gender variable with )3( items of them were in favor of females, )2( items of them were in favor of male. A comparison study between ( scientific branch & literary branch) using the Mantell – Haenzel method explore that a )9( items showed Differential Item Functioning, were in favor of scientific branch..