Past research on gender differences in performance on mathematics achievement test items has focused on characteristics of test items on which males and females perform differentially. In most instances, such studies have employed a post-hoc content analyses of test items identified via statistical analyses to function differentially for males and females. This study, in contrast, used an experimental design approach to investigate the effect of item context on differential item performance on mathematics test items between males and females. The analyses were based on a modified one parameter IRT methodology. Although some significant differences in performance were found between and within item arrangements for males and females, given the number of statistical tests employed, these significances could be due to chance alone.
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