Assessing the Similarity of the Factor Structure of the K-ABC for African-American and White Children

Abstract

The K-ABC test data from both the standardization sample and a sociocultural sample were analyzed for African-American (n = 345) and White children (n = 887) to assess the similarity of the factor structure of the test for the two ethnic groups. Four statistical techniques are applied in the analysis: comparison of the first principal component loadings; congruence coefficients based on loadings from exploratory factor analysis; congruence coefficients based on loadings from confirmatory factor analysis; and correlational analysis for assessing the similarity of the correlation matrices of the test battery for the two ethnic groups. The results show that the factor structure of the K-ABC is very similar for the Black and the White samples across the age groups. These empirical findings indicate that the construct validity of the K-ABC should hold well for both the Black and White groups.