Chinese Proficiency Test (hsk) Dif Study

Fairness is one of the impartment aspects of evaluating the quality of tests. Research on fairness dated form the early 20th century, and now it attracts more and more attention in the various fields of psychological measurement. Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is one of the significant criteria which comprise the fairness of test, and is one of the impartment components of drawing up the standardized test, and is one of the indispensable norms for the regular analysis on the test questions of many large-scale overseas tests. At present in our country, research and analysis on DIF is still a less-explored field, and is also a problem which is in great need of solution as to meet the demands of various tests. Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK) is the only national grade standardized tests which orientate overseas applicants. The complex backgrounds of the applicants reveal that research and analysis on the DIF must be paid attention to so as to guarantee the effectiveness of the tests.This paper, after making a brief diachronic survey on DIF research, makes a comprehensive combing of the theoretical research and checking method of DIF, and defines DIF in a strict way. After comparing various analytical methods of DIF, the author determines the SIBTEST to be the prior choice, which has high test efficiency and needs a moderate amount of samples. In the chapter concerning the empirical research, the author, by means of SIBTEST, makes a DIF analysis on the sex and regional variations of the test questions. The author's exploration provides abundant information for perfecting the item assignment of HSK and formulating the detailed rules of the test content, and also provides evidence for the validity. DIF research is more than a statistic process; it is a miscellaneous process, which needs the combination of concrete discipline knowledge and psychological knowledge. Combined with the characteristics of the reality of HSK and intercultural communication, this paper put s forth the concrete measure and operating rule s that must be taken in the drawing up of HSK so as to achieve fairness.Because there is little exploration of the DIF research on the HSK., this paper provides reference and enlightenment for the later research in this field and it has the real significance which must not be neglected. In addition, this paper adopts relatively reliable analytical method, so the result is fairly convincing.