Abstract

FILHO, Nelson Hauck  and  TEIXEIRA, Marco Antônio Pereira. Differential Item Functioning in the Alcohol Use Disorders Identifi cation TestFuncionamiento Diferencial del Ítem en el Alcohol Use Disorders Identifi cation Test. Aval. psicol. [online]. 2013, vol.12, n.1, pp. 19-25. ISSN 1677-0471.

The aim of the present study was to investigate Differential Item Functioning (DIF) for sex in a popular screening measure of alcohol dependence, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Participants were 254 undergraduate students. Rasch analysis-based DIF procedures were employed to evaluate the possibility of sex bias in the AUDIT items. Results showed three items with inadequate fit to the unidimensional Partial Credit model and one item with a large bias against women. Specifically, item AUDIT-6 showed a larger difficulty estimate for women, suggesting a more severe aspect of drinking behavior for these individuals. Recommendations are made with regard to using raw scores based on the sum of the 10 AUDIT items. Dropping out or reformulating the AUDIT-6 item to accommodate sex differences and to reduce errors of individual ability (severity) estimates is strongly advised.

Keywords : differential item functioning; item response theory; Rasch analysis; alcohol dependence.

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