WISC-III FACTOR INVARIANCE ACROSS SAMPLES OF CHILDREN EXHIBITING APPROPRIATE AND INAPPROPRIATE TEST-SESSION BEHAVIORS

Test-taking behaviors, such as a lack of attention, poor cooperation, and avoidance, can have an adverse impact on intelligence test scores. The Guide to the Assessment of Test Session Behavior for the WISC-III and WIAT (GATSB) provides a standardized measure of test-taking behav ior. Whether the measurement of intelligence when using the Wechsler I ntelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) actually diffe rs for children who exhibit inappropriate test-session behavior was ev aluated empirically. To test the invariance of factor structures, a mu ltisample confirmatory factor analysis, using LISREL 8, was conducted on samples of children displaying appropriate versus inappropriate beh aviors, as measured by their total GATSB scores. Factor coefficients a nd error variances were generally invariant. However, some factor vari ances and covariances were not invariant, suggesting that factor index and Full Scale IQs may have different meanings across groups of child ren who display appropriate versus inappropriate test-session behavior .