Invited Commentary: Black people and White people respond differently to social capital: what racial differential item functioning reveals for racial health equity.

In their article "Black people and White people respond differently to social capital: what racial differential item functioning reveals for racial health equity", Villalonga-Olives E. et al. (1) examined the psychometric properties of social capital indicators, comparing Black and White people to identify whether there is Differential Item Functioning (DIF) in social capital by race, and also when stratified by educational attainment, as a measure of socioeconomic status. The authors tested whether there is DIF in social capital items between Black and White people and found that DIF across these items were significant although not large, but they were still indicative of measurement error, which they alluded to be related to the way these items were developed-i.e., based on cultural assumptions tested in mainstream White America. However, some gaps remain to be fleshed out.