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ERIC Number: ED523773
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Sep
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Unfair Treatment vs. Confirmation Bias? Comments on Santelices and Wilson. Research Report. ETS RR-10-20
Dorans, Neil J.
Educational Testing Service
Santelices and Wilson (2010) claimed to have addressed technical criticisms of Freedle (2003) presented in Dorans (2004a) and elsewhere. Santelices and Wilson's abstract claimed that their study confirmed that SAT[R] verbal items do function differently for African American and White subgroups. In this commentary, I demonstrate that the Santelices and Wilson article provided no evidence to confirm differential item functioning (DIF) and failed to address my technical criticisms of Freedle. Instead, Santelices and Wilson contained several misrepresentations, including substituting "considered serious" for "more unusual" to describe an effect size and claiming to have studied four editions of the SAT when only two were actually studied. Central to its thesis was a hypothesis about DIF/difficulty correlations that was misattributed to Dorans. Santelices and Wilson based their argument for DIF on correlations between highly correlated variations on an index of DIF with item difficulty. While failing to demonstrate either unfairness in the test items or unfairness in the treatment of Freedle, Santelices and Wilson did contain evidence of confirmation bias. (Contains 2 tables and 3 notes.)
Educational Testing Service. Rosedale Road Mailstop 19R, Princeton, NJ 08541-0001. Tel: 609-921-9000; Fax: 609-734-5410; Web site: http://www.ets.org
Publication Type: Opinion Papers
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Educational Testing Service
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: SAT (College Admission Test)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A