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An Exploration of Gender Invariance of the WISC-V Among Black Children in an Urban School District

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factorial invariance of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V) between genders in a sample of Black students in an urban, public school district. Few researchers test the validity of cognitive assessments on Black samples and even fewer do so utilizing samples other than those used during standardization. Results from confirmatory factor analytic techniques and multi-group structural equation modeling using AMOS indicated that although the subtests of the WISC-V are measuring similar underlying constructs across genders, the intercepts differ on the Similarities and Coding subtests. This indicates that the scores are not necessarily interpretable at the same level in the domains of Verbal Comprehension and Working Memory, respectively. Furthermore, based on our sample of Black children, scores derived from the WISC-V should be interpreted with caution, as the five-factor model prescribed by the publishers did not fit. Implications for equitable cognitive assessment procedures, as well as noteworthy areas of additional research on cognitive assessment validity for Black children and samples not used during standardization are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M University, 4225 TAMU, 720 Harrington Tower, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Leann V. Smith

  2. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Scott L. Graves Jr

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Correspondence to Leann V. Smith.

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Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

This research study was conducted retrospectively from data obtained for clinical purposes. We consulted extensively with the data collection site’s IRB who determined that our study did not need ethical approval. An IRB official waiver of ethical approval was granted from the IRB of data collection site.

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No identifying information was collected as part of this study. All data was gathered as de-identified from pre-existing educational/clinical records.

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Smith, L.V., Graves, S.L. An Exploration of Gender Invariance of the WISC-V Among Black Children in an Urban School District. Contemp School Psychol 25, 170–182 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-020-00307-8

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