The Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ IV COG) is a comprehensive assessment battery designed to assess broad and narrow cognitive abilities, as defined by the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of intelligence. Previous studies examined the invariance of the WJ assessments across sex and age groups using factor analytic methods. Psychometric network modeling is an alternative methodology that can address both direct and indirect relationships among the observed variables. In this study, we employed psychometric network modeling to examine the invariance of the WJ IV COG across sex and age groups. Using a normative sample (n = 4212 participants) representative of the United States population, we tested the extent to which the factorial structure of the WJ IV COG aligned with CHC theory for the school-aged sample. Next, we used psychometric network modeling as a data-driven method to investigate whether the network structure of the WJ IV COG remains similar across different sex and age (age 6 to 19, inclusively) groups. Our results showed that the WJ IV COG maintained the same network structure across all age and sex groups, although the network structure at younger ages indicated weaker relationships among some subtests. Overall, the results provide construct validity evidence for the WJ IV COG, based on both theoretical and data-driven methods.
While the inclusion of both positively and negatively worded items is a common practice in scales, using positively and negatively worded items together may threaten the validity of a scale. Several studies have been devoted to investigating the effects of item wording methods. The current study investigated item wording effects on the responses of 4028 Turkish fifth-grade students, who responded to the Students Confidence in Mathematics (SCM) and Students Confidence in Science (SCS) scales. The role of early literacy-related variables (i.e., early literacy activities undertaken before primary school, student performance on reading literacy tasks upon entering primary school, and duration of the children's pre-primary school attendance) on item wording effects was also examined. The investigations were conducted using confirmatory factor analysis and the correlated trait-correlated method minus one CFA-CTC(M-1) model, derived from the correlated traits-correlated methods framework. The results indicate that significant item wording effects existed in both scales. Moreover, a significant and positive effect was found in both scales relating to early literacy activities undertaken before school, but no effects were found relating to student performance on reading literacy tasks upon entering primary school or duration of the children's pre-primary school attendance. Overall, the study suggests that researchers and practitioners should consider potential effects when including both positively and negatively worded items in scales, especially scales designed for younger students.
Objective:The aim of this study is to analyze all the variables obtained from photoscreener using hierarchical cluster analysis to create more homogeneous age groups for more reliable and consistent measurement by photoscreener. Methods: The variables obtained from photoscreener examination of consecutive children who attended the ophthalmology department were evaluated. Medical records of the children were evaluated to ontain data including refractive parameters, deviation angle, pupil diameter variables and the calculated spherical equivalent, the cylindrical power vector J0, J45 values. These variables were analyzed by the multivariate cluster analysis. Results: Based on a dendrogram, 4 main clusters of similar quality variables were created. The calculated spherical equivalent decreased gradually from cluster I to IV, from 0.745 D to -0.235 D. The average pupil size in the Ist cluster was 5.06 mm, while in the IVth cluster, it was 6.38 mm. The proposed new age borders are distinct and statistically significant (P < .001). The ultimate proposed new age borders were found as 1-20, 21-64, 65-101, and 102-120 months, respectively. Conclusions: We proposed new age borders for the evaluation of refraction and pupil size of children which create new groups with a statistically different and homogeneous distribution. The proposed new age borders in this research would provide more reliable and consistent measurement results for clinical diagnosis.
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