Examining gender-related differential item functioning of the Veterans Rand 12-item Health Survey

Abstract

Previous research suggests that gender differences in patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) may reflect measurement bias rather than true differences in underlying health status. The aim of this study is to examine whether the Veterans Rand 12-item Health Survey (VR-12) allows for unbiased comparisons of physical and mental health scores across gender. The VR-12 is a generic PROM consisting of 12 items with 3–6 response options for the measurement of mental and physical health. Study data were from the 2015 Health Outcomes Survey pertaining to the Medicare beneficiaries. A total of 277,518 participants included 116,817 (42.1%) males and 160,701 (57.9%) females. Scale-level and item-level differential functioning methods were applied using multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis and ordinal logistic regression, respectively. The scale-level differential functioning showed support for strict invariance (RMSEA = 0.045; CFI = 0.995) across gender. Although we found statistically significant differential item functioning for several items, the magnitude was negligible (maximum ΔR 2 = 0.007).The VR-12 physical and mental health status scores are unbiased with respect to gender.

Publication
In Quality of Life Research