A cross-cultural comparison of non-cognitive outputs towards science between Turkish and Dutch students taking into account detected person misfit

Comparing countries according to their PISA results can be considered cross-cultural studies. An important issue in these studies is that the measurement tools must be culturally and linguistically equivalent. Cultural or linguistic differences in measurement tools may threaten validity. Aberrant behavior is another important factor that affects validity. Person-fit analysis is a statistical method of detecting aberrant individual behavior. This study investigated the effects of students who were flagged as aberrant on a comparison of Turkish and Dutch students’ non-cognitive outputs towards science in the PISA 2015. Whether the items contained differential item functioning (DIF) or not was determined by a Poly-SIBTEST for each scale. Misfit students were detected by non-parametric G_N^p and U3^p statistics. It was determined that flagged students were not effective for comparing the mean of non-cognitive outputs towards science, but it was observed that flagged students had an effect on DIF.