International large-scale assessments provide cross-national data on students' cognitive and non-cognitive characteristics. A critical methodological issue that often arises in comparing data from cross-national studies is ensuring measurement invariance, indicating that the construct under investigation is the same across the compared groups.…

Although the root-mean squared deviation (RMSD) is a popular statistical measure for evaluating country-specific item-level misfit (i.e., differential item functioning [DIF]) in international large-scale assessment, this paper shows that its sensitivity to detect misfit may depend strongly on the proficiency distribution of the considered…

Standard errors computed according to the operational practices of international large-scale assessment studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment's (PISA) or the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) may be biased when cross-national differential item functioning (DIF) and item parameter drift are…