Weber Ann M, Fernald Lia C H, Galasso Emanuela, Ratsifandrihamanana Lisy
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.
School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2015 Apr 1;10(4):e0121767. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121767. eCollection 2015.
Language tests developed and validated in one country may lose their desired properties when translated for use in another, possibly resulting in misleading estimates of ability. Using Item Response Theory (IRT) methodology, we assess the performance of a test of receptive vocabulary, the U.S.-validated Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-III), when translated, adapted, and administered to children 3 to 10 years of age in Madagascar (N = 1372), in the local language (Malagasy). Though Malagasy is considered a single language, there are numerous dialects spoken in Madagascar. Our findings were that test scores were positively correlated with age and indicators of socio-economic status. However, over half (57/96) of items evidenced unexpected response variation and/or bias by local dialect spoken. We also encountered measurement error and reduced differentiation among person abilities when we used the publishers' recommended stopping rules, largely because we lost the original item ordering by difficulty when we translated test items into Malagasy. Our results suggest that bias and testing inefficiency introduced from the translation of the PPVT can be significantly reduced with the use of methods based on IRT at both the pre-testing and analysis stages. We explore and discuss implications for cross-cultural comparisons of internationally recognized tests, such as the PPVT.
在一个国家开发并验证的语言测试，在翻译后用于另一个国家时，可能会失去其预期的特性，从而可能导致对能力的误导性估计。我们运用项目反应理论（IRT）方法，评估了一项接受性词汇测试——在美国经过验证的《皮博迪图片词汇测验第三版》（PPVT-III），在翻译成马达加斯加当地语言（马达加斯加语）并对3至10岁的马达加斯加儿童（N = 1372）进行改编和测试时的表现。尽管马达加斯加语被视为一种单一语言，但马达加斯加有多种方言。我们的研究结果表明，测试分数与年龄以及社会经济地位指标呈正相关。然而，超过一半（57/96）的项目因当地所说方言而出现了意外的反应差异和/或偏差。当我们使用出版商推荐的停止规则时，还遇到了测量误差以及个体能力区分度降低的问题，这主要是因为我们将测试项目翻译成马达加斯加语时失去了按难度排列的原始项目顺序。我们的结果表明，在测试前和分析阶段使用基于IRT的方法，可以显著减少PPVT翻译中引入的偏差和测试效率低下的问题。我们探讨并讨论了对国际认可的测试（如PPVT）进行跨文化比较的影响。
