International Education Studies: Increasing Their Linguistic Comparability by Developing Judgmental Reviews

Table 1

Language-related sources of bias.

(1)	Differences in grammatical form and structure (e.g., word order, complexity of syntax, and pronouns), including typographical differences (e.g., punctuation, capitalization).
(2)	Differences in meaning, connotations, and register, especially as concerns key words (e.g., metaphors, idioms; words with several meanings in one language but not in the other; technical words translated as more everyday words).
(3)	Differences in item format (e.g., sentence-completion items).
(4)	Words and structures prone to misreading (e.g., the French au-dessous “below” read as au-dessus “above”).
(5)	Inaccurate translation, including additions or omissions (e.g., omitting the phrase “according to the text” from the item, in which case responses may be given not on the basis of the text but on the basis of general knowledge) and differences in how literal the match between the item and the stimulus text is (e.g., literal versus synonymous match).
(6)	Translation errors (e.g., semantic, syntactic, and orthographic errors).