Part of the National Assessment of Institutions of Higher Education considers student performance through ENADE. In this article we performed differential item function analysis of the ENADE that took place in 2006 trying to detect items with problems in measurement equivalence in the assessment of freshman and senior students and from public and private institutions. We analyzed a sample of 26,613 freshmen and seniors representative of all the courses in the country. We used the Rasch analysis and logistic regression to detect DIF. Eleven of the 30 items composing the test showed DIF. Two types of DIF were observed, one occurring in less discriminating items and the other in more discriminating items. The most relevant subgroup of items tends to favor students from public institutions. We also discuss the issue of discrimination parameter being an indicator of DIF.
Item Response Theory; ENADE; Logistic regression; Rasch model; Validity
