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WISC‐R factor structures among White, Mexican American, and African American children: A research note
Author(s) -
Valencia Richard R.,
Rankin Richard J.,
Oakland Tom
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1520-6807(199701)34:1<11::aid-pits2>3.0.co;2-y
Subject(s) - psychology , wechsler intelligence scale for children , confirmatory factor analysis , wechsler adult intelligence scale , socioeconomic status , exploratory factor analysis , developmental psychology , intelligence quotient , psychometrics , statistics , demography , cognition , population , structural equation modeling , mathematics , neuroscience , sociology
The factor structure for the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children‐Revised (WISC‐R) was investigated for White ( n = 183), Mexican American ( n = 129), and African American ( n = 139) nonreferred school‐age children (6.8 to 14.6 years) of low‐to middle‐class socioeconomic background. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed. The WISC‐R factor structure model tested was Kaufman's (1975) three‐factor solution that consisted of Verbal Comprehension (VC, Factor 1), Perceptual Organization (PO, Factor 2), and Freedom from Distractibility (FD, Factor 3). The results of the exploratory analyses showed Kaufman's three‐factor solution for the three ethnic groups, but the order of Factor 2 and Factor 3 was reversed for the Mexican American and African American samples—thus raising questions about the comparability of the WISC‐R factor structure across groups. The confirmatory analyses, which used the orthogonal nested factors approach by Gustafsson and Balke (1993), resulted in a model (for each of the ethnic groups) in which a G factor explained most of the variance (followed by the nested first‐order factors—VC, PO, and FD). The results of the confirmatory analyses provide some support for David Wechsler's (1974) original intentions that the WISC‐R structure is best described as having a general, or global, factor. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.