2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

766
DEOCS: A New and Improved MEOCS
Stephen A. Truhon
Department of Social Sciences
Winston-Salem State University
Winston-Salem, NC 27110
truhons@wssu.edu
ABSTRACT
The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) has studied
equal opportunity through the use the Military Equal Opportunity Climate Survey
(MEOCS) for more than a decade. In the process of updating the MEOCS a new version
called the DEOCS (DEOMI Equal Opportunity Climate Survey) has been developed,
which uses items from the MEOCS-EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity version) that
have been neutralized (i.e., direct references to a majority and minority race and male and
female gender have been removed). A three-step process was used to compare the
DEOCS items with their counterparts in the MEOCS-EEO. Item response theory (IRT)
using the MULTILOG program was performed to calculate difficulty and discrimination
parameters. These parameters were matched to a common scale through the use of the
EQUATE program. Differential item functioning (DIF) was then performed through the
use of the DFIT and SIBTEST programs to discover any item bias. Results showed that
few items displayed item bias (i.e., DIF), usually when those items were extensively
reworded for the DEOCS. In most cases those items displaying DIF the version in the
DEOCS had superior psychometric properties compared to their versions in the MEOCS-
EEO.
INTRODUCTION
A major research project for the Defense Equal Opportunity Management
Institute (DEOMI) has been the development and testing of the Military Equal
Opportunity Climate Survey (MEOCS; Landis, Dansby, & Faley, 1993). This project
includes revising the MEOCS and keeping it up to date.
Suggested revisions to the MEOCS have included shortening it and making its
items more neutral (i.e., replacing references to “majority,” “minority,” “men,” and
“women” with more general terms “race” and “gender” and then using demographic
information to determine the respondent’s specific race and gender). Various methods for
shortening the MEOCS have been examined including confirmatory factor analysis
(McIntyre, 1999), cluster analysis (Truhon, 1999), and item response theory (IRT;
Truhon, 2000, 2002).
Fifty-one items from the MEOCS-EEO have been rewritten to be more neutral in
the DEOCS. The purpose of the current study was to compare the revised items with their
original versions through the use of IRT and DIF.
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003