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JPAXXX10.1177/0734282916642679Journal of Psychoeducational AssessmentBeaujean
Brief Article
Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment
2016, Vol. 34(4) 404–408
Reproducing the Wechsler © The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0734282916642679
Children–Fifth Edition: jpa.sagepub.com
A. Alexander Beaujean1
Abstract
One of the ways to increase the reproducibility of research is for authors to provide a
sufficient description of the data analytic procedures so that others can replicate the results.
The publishers of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Fifth Edition (WISC-V) do not
follow these guidelines when reporting their confirmatory factor analysis results. Consequently,
scholars have been frustrated when they have tried to replicate the results in the WISC-V
technical manual. I explain how the WISC-V publishers set the scale of their latent variables and
demonstrate how to replicate the WISC-V models using the R statistical program.
Keywords
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, WISC-V, research replication, latent variable scaling,
effects coding
There has been an increasing call for psychology research to be more reproducible (Nosek et al.,
2015; Open Science Collaboration, 2015). One way to do this is “the materials, data, and analysis
scripts should be made available in addition to the final article so that other researchers can repro-
duce the reported findings or test alternative explanations” (Asendorpf et al., 2013, p. 113). This
suggestion not only applies to scholarship published in peer-reviewed articles but also to com-
mercially available tests. Standard 7.4 of the Standards for Educational and Psychological
Testing (4th edition) states, “Test documentation should summarize test development procedures,
including descriptions and the results of the statistical analyses that were used in the development
of the test. . .” (American Educational Research Association, APA, & National Council on
Measurement in Education, 2014, p. 126).
In the technical manual for the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Fifth Edition
(WISC-V; Wechsler, 2014a), the publishers did not report some essential information involving
their confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Specifically, the publishers did not indicate how they
set the scales for their latent variables. Had they used traditional latent scale-setting methods, not
reporting all the details would be understandable as there is no expectation that they report every
Corresponding Author:
A. Alexander Beaujean, Department of Educational Psychology, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97301, Waco,
TX 76798-7301, USA.
Email: Alex_Beaujean@baylor.edu
detail of every data analysis—especially those that they can assume knowledgeable readers
would know. The WISC-V publishers did not use traditional scale-setting methods, however,
which has caused those wishing to replicate the WISC-V’s models considerable frustration (e.g.,
Canivez & Watkins, 2016). Consequently, those wishing to conduct independent analyses of the
WISC-V scores have been unable to reproduce the model’s degrees of freedom (df)—a crucial
component in checking that latent variable models are specified correctly (Loehlin, 2004).
While being able to reproduce a model’s df might seem like a trivial issue, it is not. The df give
an indication of a model’s parsimony and are used in many fit measures’ calculations. Thus, if a
test publisher uses CFA as part of its argument for the scores’ validity, it is essential for individu-
als examining this validity evidence to be able to “follow which model parameters are free, fixed,
or constrained to a value for identification or for another purpose” (Boomsma, Hoyle, & Panter,
2012, pp. 343-344). Hoyle and Isherwood (2013) thought this issue was so important that they
added the criterion of being able to derive a model’s df to their latent variable model supplement
of APA’s journal article reporting standards (JARS; APA Publications and Communications
Board Working Group on JARS, 2008).
Effects Coding
The WISC-V publishers used the effects-coding method to set the scale of their latent variable.
Little, Slegers, and Card (2006) developed this method for scaling a latent variable to be analo-
gous to effects coding in ANOVA. For a single latent variable, it requires that the set of loadings
have an average value of one, or, equivalently, the loadings sum to the number of unique indica-
tor variables.1 This constraint is shown in Equation 1.
pr
∑λ
i =1
ir = p, (1)
where r indexes one specific latent variable and p is the number of indicator variables for the rth
latent variable. Using this constraint scales the latent variance to be the average of the indicator
variables’ variances. Little et al. argued that this method provides an optimal balance across a
latent variable’s possible indicators to establish its scale.
∑λ
i =1
i = p ′,
(2)
where p′ is the number of indicator variables for all latent variables in the entire model.
To date, the WISC-V publishers have not stated that they used effects coding in any of their
released documentation for the instrument. Through an exploration of a variety of latent variable
scaling methods, however, I was able to replicate the results from the WISC-V technical manual
using the constraint shown in Equation 2. To prove that the constraints shown in Equation 2 are
Table 1. Results From Fitting Model 5e From the WISC-V Technical Manual and the Modified
Effects-Coding Scaling.
those used in the WISC-V technical manual (Wechsler, 2014b), in the appendix, I provide R
syntax (R Development Core Team, 2015) to fit the WISC-V CFA model preferred by the pub-
lisher (Model 5e). I use the lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012) and fit the model using the all-ages
summary statistics provided in the WISC-V technical manual (Wechsler, 2014b).2 In Table 1, I
compare my results with those provided in the technical manual. The χ2 and model fit values are
not the exact same because I used summary statistics and maximum likelihood estimation while
the WISC-V publishers used individual test scores and weighted least squares estimation.
Nonetheless, the values are very close and, more importantly, the df are the exact same.
modified effects coding. Consequently, using the modified effects coding could lead to rejecting
latent variable models that actually fit the data well. In any case, future research can now exam-
ine these issues as independent clinicians and scholars should now able to replicate the WISC-V
validation CFA models.
Appendix
R Syntax to Reproduce the Results of Selected Confirmatory Factor Analytic Models from the
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Fifth Edition (WISC-V) Technical Manual.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. There are additional constraints for the intercepts, but they are only typically useful when comparing
multiple groups.
2. For detailed information on fitting latent variable models using the lavaan package, see Beaujean
(2014).
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