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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Education and sex differences in the Mini-Mental State Examination
— effects of differential item functioning | | Author(s) | Richard N Jones, Joseph J Gallo |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 57B, no 6, November 2002 |
| Pages | pp P548-P558 |
| Keywords | Educational status [elderly] ; Older men ; Older women ; Cognitive processes ; Evaluation ; Measurement ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Differential item functioning (DIF) is variously referred to as item bias and item-response bias. The purpose of the present analysis was to examine gender and education group differences in performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) at the item level. The primary hypothesis was that items requiring literacy or computation skills would show evidence of DIF attributable to years of completed education. Responses from the US National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) (n=8,556) were analysed. Significant gender and educational group DIF were detected, but this accounted for a very small fraction of the overall group differences in assessed cognition. Thus, item bias does not appear to be a major source of observed differences in cognitive status by educational attainment. Adjustments of total scores that eliminate educational group differences are not supported by the results. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-021216265 A |
| Classmark | F:V: BC: BD: DA: 4C: 3R: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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