Do Reading Passages about War Provide Factorially Invariant Scores for Men and Women?

In this study, we investigated the factorial invariance of male and female student scores when reading comprehension was assessed with narrative and expository passages. The expository passage concerned the Civil War and was of special interest because item bias research has suggested that war and military content disadvantage women. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the fit of the data for both genders to several factor models, and then to investigate several levels of invariance. Fit indexes supported measurement invariance across the genders for narrative and expository scores. Specifically, the narrative and expository item factor loadings and intercepts were invariant for both genders. In addition, invariance across both genders was shown for the expository factor variances and means. These results support the continued use of passages about war for reading comprehension assessments. However, further research with different reading assessments and factorial structures needs to verify these results as well as to investigate the differences across the genders for most narrative item error variances.