JONAED

The researchers detected uniform and non-uniform gender differential item functioning in Economics multiple choice standardized test in Nigeria. One research question and one hypothesis guided the study. The design of this study is a survey which involved the inferential method. The population of the study was 4,434,979 secondary school students in the 11,875 public secondary schools in the 36 states including Abuja the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Nigeria involving purposive and simple random sampling techniques. The instruments for data collection were Socio-Demographic Inventory (SDI) and a 50 item WAEC General Economics Paper I Multiple Choice Test. The instruments were revalidated by five specialists, three in Educational Measurement and Evaluation and two from Economics Education from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike and Imo State University, Owerri. The reliability of the test was reestablished using Kuder-Richardson formular 20 (KR-20) statistics with an index of 0.80. In answering the research question, IRT-Binary Logistic Regression method was used while the hypotheses were tested using Wald test associated with binary logistic regression statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The result indicated that, out of the 13 items that have DIF issues, 8 fall under the category of uniform DIF while 5 were non-uniform DIF. The uniform DIF items are 13, 15, 20, 24, 37, 39, 42 and 46; while the non-uniform DIF items are 9, 22, 30, 37 and 44. This shows that 8 items significantly displayed uniform DIF while 5 items significantly displayed non-uniform DIF. It was recommended that examining bodies, evaluators, and all other educational practitioners should be mindful and pay serious attention on gender when setting examination items.