Agung Santoso, PhD will present his doctoral dissertation in psychology entitled “Equivalence Testing for Anchor Selection in Differential Item Functioning (DIF) Detection” during Seminar Sanata Dharma Berbagi on June 12, 2019 at 08.30 – 11.30 am.  Dr. Agung will be joined  by Dr. Aquilina Tanti Arini, a faculty member of Sanata Dharma University.

Dr. Agung Santoso is a 2013 DIKTI-funded Fulbright Grants for Indonesian Lecturers – PhD where he earned his doctoral degree in Quantitative Psychology at University of Notre Dame. His research was related to evaluating statistical / psychometric techniques. He holds a master’s degree in Educational Psychology at University of Georgia, also sponsored by the Fulbright program. He is currently an associate professor in Psychology Department, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

A short summary of the research:

Differential item functioning (DIF) has been a major issue in educational and psychological test development. Items with such characteristic are unfair because they are more difficult for a group of examinees to answer regardless of the examinees’ levels of ability. The methods to detect such items rely on other items that function similarly across groups, called DIF-free items. Procedures that have been proposed hitherto to select DIF-free items are conceptually incorrect due to their reliance on the null hypothesis testing. The current research investigated the use of equivalence testing in selecting anchor items to detect differential item functioning. The equivalence testing is more in line with the goal of selecting DIF-free items compared to the null hypothesis testing.

Poster of the event: