Exploratory and higher order factor analysis of the WJ-III full test battery: A school-aged analysis.

Abstract

Development of the Woodcock-Johnson (3rd ed.; WJ-III; Woodcock, McGrew & Mather, 2001a) was guided in part by Carroll's (1993) 3-stratum theory of cognitive abilities and based on confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), even though Carroll used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to derive his theory. Using CFA, McGrew and Woodcock (2001) found a 9-factor model across all age ranges. To determine if the 9-factor structure holds for the full WJ-III battery, we applied currently recognized best practices in EFA to 2 school-aged 42-subtest correlation matrices (ages 9–13 and 14–19 years). Six factors emerged at the 9–13 age range, while 5 factors were indicated at the 14–19 age range. The resulting 1st-order factors displayed patterns of both convergence with and divergence from the WJ-III results presented in the Technical Manual. These results also revealed a robust manifestation of general intelligence (g) that dwarfed the variance attributed to the lower order factors. It is surprising that this study represents the first time the WJ-III full battery was subjected to EFA analyses given the instrument's significant use by practitioners and that it served as the initial evidentiary basis for Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory. The lack of confirmation of CFA results with EFA methods in the current study permits questioning of the structure of the WJ-III and its relationship with CHC theory. Additional independent, structural analyses are clearly indicated for the WJ-III full test battery before we can be confident in its structure.

Construct Validity of the WISC–IVUKWith a Large Referred Irish Sample

“…Three independent WISC -IV studies (Bodin, Pardini, Burns, & Stevens, 2009;Watkins, 2006;Watkins, Wilson, Kotz, Carbone, & Babula, 2006) examined the higher-order structure of the WISC -IV and found that the majority of subtest variance was associated with the higher-order general intelligence dimension and substantially smaller amounts of variance were related to the first-order factors. This is a consistent finding among Wechsler scales, specifically, as also observed with the French WISC -IV (Golay, Reverte, Rossier, Favez, & Lecerf, 2012), the French Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale -Third Edition (WAIS -III; Golay & Lecerf, 2011), and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (WAIS -IV; Canivez & Watkins, 2010a, 2010b, as well as intelligence tests, in general (Canivez, 2008(Canivez, , 2011Canivez, Konold, Collins, & Wilson, 2009;Dombrowski & Watkins, 2013;Dombrowski, Watkins, & Brogan, 2009;Nelson & Canivez, 2012, Nelson, Canivez, Lindstrom, & Hatt, 2007.…”

“…CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF THE WISC-IV UK et al, 2009;Watkins, 2006;Watkins et al, 2006), French WISC-IV (Golay et al, 2012), Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales-Fifth Edition (Roid, 2003; see also Canivez, 2008), Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (Psychological Corporation, 1999) and Wide Range Intelligence Test (Glutting, Adams, & Sheslow, 2000; see also Canivez et al, 2009), Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2003; see also Dombrowski et al, 2009;Nelson & Canivez, 2012;Nelson et al, 2007), Cognitive Assessment System (Naglieri & Das, 1997; see also Canivez, 2011), French WAIS-III (Golay & Lecerf, 2011), WAIS-IV (Canivez & Watkins, 2010a, 2010bNiileksela et al, 2012), and the Woodcock-Johnson-Third Edition Psychoeducational Battery (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001; see also Dombrowski & Watkins, 2013). The implication of these consistent findings is that the overall, omnibus FSIQ score should retain primary interpretive weight, rather than the firstorder, specific, factor-based index scores.…”

Re(Examining) Relations between CHC Broad and Narrow Cognitive Abilities and Reading Achievement

“…More importantly, the predictive effects associated with broad and narrow dimensions as a whole were manifestly weaker once the effects of the GIA were accounted for. Given the WJ III structural validity findings furnished by Dombrowski (2013Dombrowski ( , 2014 and Dombrowski and Watkins (2013) indicating that these measures mostly sample general intelligence, the latter finding was not surprising.…”

“…Subsequent structural and latent variable modeling studies conducted on the WJ III COG suggest that (a) many of the broad and narrow ability scores contain large portions of variance attributable to g (Dombrowski, 2013(Dombrowski, , 2014Dombrowski & Watkins, 2013), (b) g exerts strong direct or indirect influence on reading achievement (Benson, 2007;Floyd et al, 2007;Floyd et al, 2012;Vanderwood, McGrew, Flanagan, & Keith, 2002), and (c) when the predictive effects g are controlled for, the aggregate incremental contributions of broad and narrow abilities may be small McGill & Busse, 2015). As a consequence, the present study sought to reexamine the findings produced by Evans and colleagues (2001) utilizing an alternative analytical scheme (HMRA) to determine the extent to which WJ III COG broad and narrow cluster scores provided meaningful improvements in the prediction of WJ III ACH reading scores beyond the GIA composite across the same age range.…”

“…Additionally, the results produced from structural validity and latent variable modeling studies raise additional concern about the potential impact of this omission. Several of these studies specifically analyzed the WJ III COG (e.g., Dombrowski, 2013Dombrowski, , 2014Dombrowski & Watkins, 2013;Strickland, Watkins, & Caterino, 2015). In these structural validity studies, it was concluded that the WJ III COG was potentially overfactored (i.e., too many factors extracted), was a solid measure of general intellectual ability, but that caution should be heeded when interpreting the broad and narrow ability scores as singular entities as they were saturated with non-trivial proportions of variance attributable to g and lacked enough target construct variance for confident clinical interpretation.…”