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As use of the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) scales has grown significantly over the past decade (Goldberg, Johnson, Eber, Hogan, Ashton, Cloninger, & Gough, 2006) research on the psychometric properties of the items and scales have become increasingly important. This research study examines the IPIP scale constructed to measure the Five Factor Model (FFM) domain of Neuroticism (as measured by the NEO-PI-R) for occurrences of differential functioning at both the item and test level by gender and three age ranges using the DFIT framework (Raju, van der Linden, & Fleer, 1993) This study found six items that displayed differential item functioning by gender and three items that displayed differential item functioning by age. No differential functioning at the test level was found. Items demonstrating DIF and implications for potential scale revision are discussed. / Ph. D.

The need to publish and disseminate data continues to grow. Administrators of large-scale educational assessment should provide examinee microdata in addition to publishing assessment reports. Disclosure avoidance methods are applied to the data to protect examinee privacy before doing so, while attempting to preserve as many item statistical properties as possible. When important properties like differential item functioning are lost due to these disclosure avoidance methods, the microdata can give off misleading messages of effectiveness in measuring the test construct. In this research study, I investigated the preservation of differential item functioning in a large-scale assessment after disclosure avoidance methods have been applied to the data. After applying data swapping to protect the data, I attempted to empirically model and explain the likelihood of preserving various levels of differential item functioning as a function of several factors including the data swapping rate, the reference-to-focal group ratio, the type of item scoring, and the level of DIF prior to data swapping. / Ph. D.

To date, the effect of planning ability on adaptive functioning has not been extensively examined in children treated for brain tumors. Findings indicate that individuals with brain tumors are more likely to experience poor planning ability (Boyd & Sautter, 1993) and that children with even mild neurological complications demonstrate impairments in adaptive functioning (Fletcher et al., 1990). The purpose of this study is to assess spatial planning and to examine its utility in predicting adaptive and cognitive functional impairment in children diagnosed and treated for brain tumors. Forty children diagnosed with a brain tumor (mean age at diagnosis 8.6 years) were administered the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) task, the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS), and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Fourth Edition (SB:IV) at an average of one year post diagnosis (post acute) and again at two years post diagnosis (long term). The results of this investigation did not support the use of spatial planning skills as a predictor of adaptive functioning at one year or two years post diagnosis. However, spatial planning skill was an important predictor of cognitive functioning, accounting for a significant amount of variance at both one year and two years post diagnosis. These results were not expected and therefore further analyses were performed in order to better understand the data and results. Additional analyses suggest that it is spatial skill and not spatial planning that predicts adaptive functioning. Further research should continue to ask questions that will impact how we understand executive, adaptive, and cognitive functioning outcomes in children diagnosed with brain tumors.