The Black-White Difference On the K-ABC: Implications for Future Tests

Abstract

Claims that the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) is less culturally biased than other standard tests of intelligence and therefore shows a much smaller average difference between black and white children are critically examined in terms of the psychometric properties of the K-ABC. It is concluded that the apparently reduced difference between black and white samples, as compared with the one standard deviation difference typically found on other IQ tests, is not the result of greater validity or of less biased measurement of children's intelligence by the K-ABC. The diminished black-white difference on the K-ABC seems to be largely the result of psychometric and statistical artifacts: lower g loadings of the mental processing scales and greater heterogeneity of the standardization sample, which causes mean group differences to be smaller when they are expressed in standard score units. The general factor measured by the K-ABC is essentially the same g as that of the Stanford-Binet and Wechsler scales. But the K-ABC yields a more diluted and less valid measure of g than do the other tests. The K-ABC factors of successive and simultaneous mental processing, independent of the g factor, constitute only a small fraction of the total variance in K-ABC scores, and the predictive validity of these small factors per se is probably nil. The present criticisms of the K-ABC suggest new means for improving the design of future tests for measuring general intelligence.

K-ABC and McCarthy scale performance among “at-risk” and normal preschoolers

“…Reports by Jensen (1984), Kamphaus, Kaufman, and Kaufman (1982), and Kaufman (1984) indicate that the K-ABC Mental Processing subtests compare quite favorably to WISC-R subtests as measures of g. These figures are also quite comparable to those reported by Kaufman and Kaufman (1977b) for McCarthy subtest loadings on the first unrotated (i.e., g) factor. It may, therefore, be reasonable to utilize both the K-ABC and McCarthy when attempting to identify an individual child's profile of strengths and weaknesses.…”

Factor Structure of the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children-Fourth Edition Among Referred Native American Students

“…Specifically, some children have lived primarily on a reservation, whereas others have lived primarily in rural or urban environments. Previous research identified differences in performance on cognitive measures between children who live in rural and urban environments (Jensen, 1984;TannerHalverson et al, 1993;Tempest, 1998), making the child"s living situation a possible source of variance that should be accounted for. Given the limited range of sampling, the generalizability of these results to other samples of Native American children from different tribes and who reside in different regions of the United States is uncertain.…”

Intelligence tests and gifted assessment: What are the positives?

“…The g factor underlies performance on almost every type of mental task and is found to some extent on all cognitive tests. Jensen (1984) demonstrated empirically that the three major intelligence tests used to assess gifted children (Stanford-Binet, WISC-R, and K-ABC) all measure very much the same g and have very high loadings on the g factor.…”