OBJECTIVE. The objective was to determine whether the School Version of the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (School AMPS) is valid when used to evaluate students in different world regions.
METHOD. Participants were 984 students, ages 3–13 yr, from North America, Australia and New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the Nordic countries, matched for age and diagnoses. We used FACETS many-faceted Rasch analyses to generate item difficulty calibrations by region and evaluate for significant differential item functioning (DIF) and differential test functioning (DTF).
RESULTS. Four School AMPS items demonstrated DIF but resulted in no DTF.
CONCLUSION. This study provided support for occupational therapists using the School AMPS to evaluate students’ quality of schoolwork task performances across regions because the School AMPS measures are free of bias associated with world region.
The Evaluation of Social Interaction (ESI; Fisher & Griswold, 2008) assesses a person's performance of social interaction skills in the natural context with typical social partners during any area of occupation. We used Rasch analysis of 175 observations of 128 people, ages 4-73, to examine internal scale validity, the items' skill hierarchy and intended purpose, and the ESI's ability to differentiate between people with and without disabilities. The ESI demonstrated validity for 24 of 27 skills and six intended purposes, with a hierarchy of performance. Of the observations, 95.3% demonstrated goodness of fit to the Rasch model, indicating person response validity. People without a disability demonstrated significantly higher social skills performance than those with a known disability (t= 4.468, df= 83 p= .000). The ESI has the potential to provide a quantitative assessment of social interaction performance in the natural context of a person's desired occupation and may be useful for intervention planning and outcome measurement.
Date Presented 4/8/2016
We used Rasch analyses of participants’ Evaluation of Social Interaction (ESI) scores to test for differential item functioning (DIF), differential social exchange functioning (DSF), and differential test functioning (DTF). We found minimal DIF and no DSF or DTF, concluding that ESI measures are at minimal risk for cross-cultural bias.
Primary Author and Speaker: Brett Berg
Contributing Author: Anne G. Fisher
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