Cross-cultural Equivalence of the PISA Student Questionnaire

In this study, cross-lingual and cross-cultural equivalence of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 Student Questionnaire was assessed comparatively across Turkey, the United States of America, Australia, and New Zealand samples. At the first stage of this study, the factor structure of the questionnaire constructs was examined using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). At the second stage, Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analyses (MG-CFA) based on Mean and Covariance Structures (MACS; Sorbom, 1974) were conducted in order to determine whether the questionnaire items exhibit differential item functioning (DIE) across different cultures or languages. At the last stage, causes of DIF were identified by expert judgments. CFA results showed that the measurement model had the same factor structure across samples. MG-CFA results indicated that some items exhibited DIE between countries. It is observed that as the linguistic and cultural differences increased between countries, the number of DIF items increased. The main reasons for DIE were found to be due to poor translation and differences in cultural relevance.