ABSTRACT
The studies of what has come to be known as item bias were apparently first undertaken in earnest in the 1960s. These studies were designed to develop methods for studying cultural differences and for investigating the assertion that the principal, if not the sole, reason for the great disparity in test performance between Black and Hispanic students and White students on tests of cognitive ability is that the tests contain items that are outside the realms of the minority cultures. The presumption was that these items deal with content that minority students have little occasion and less opportunity to learn. The more specific goal of these studies was, and continues to be, to ide_B.tify any items that are biased against minority students and to remove them from the tests.
