Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

CHAPTER 4 STANDARDS AND FAIRNESS75The most popular method used for thestudy of construct validity bias is factoranalysis. Numerous researchers have usedsimilar procedures. The central characteristicof these procedures is to conductfactor analyses separately for various culturaland gender groups, and determineif a similar factor structure is yielded foreach group. The most popular procedurefor assessing agreement between factorstructures across groups is a coefficient ofcongruence, which is interpreted similar toa correlation coefficient.Lachar and Gruber (1994) provide anexample of this method for the PersonalityInventory for Youth (see Chap. 6). Theyconducted factor analyses separately by genderand ethnicity, and then compared the factorsyielded separately for the groups. Theirfindings were similar to those for abilitytests (Kamphaus, 2001) in that correlationsbetween the obtained factors were uniformlyhigh, in the low 0.90 at their worst.Predictive Validity BiasThe final type of bias that has received agreat deal of attention is predictive validitybias. A working definition of predictivevalidity bias is“A test is considered biased with respect topredictive validity if the inference drawnfrom the test score is not made with thesmallest feasible random error or if there isconstant error in an inference for predictionas a function of membership in a particulargroup”. (p. 638) (Reynolds & Kaiser, 1990)The issue of predictive or criterion-relatedvalidity is that these coefficients should notdiffer significantly across cultural or gendergroups. One of the typical procedures in thisresearch literature is to compare the predictivevalidity coefficients across groups. Astudy might compare the ability of a depressionmeasure to predict future adjustmentfor various groups, for example.If different predictive validity coefficientswere obtained for two or more groups, theresults would be called slope bias. In order tounderstand the concept of slope bias, it ishelpful to recall how correlation coefficientsare learned in introductory statistics courses.Such procedures are typically taught by havingthe students collect data on two variablesand plot the scores of a group of individualson these two variables. This plot results in ascatter plot. Then students compute a correlationcoefficient and draw a line of bestfit through the scatter plot. This line of bestfit is a visual representation of the slope. Acorrelation coefficient (predictive validitycoefficient) of 0.90 would produce a slopethat is very different from that obtainedwith a correlation coefficient of 0.30. Consequently,this form of bias in prediction isoften referred to as slope bias.Summary Comments on BiasWhile psychometric evidence of test biascan be found, little compelling evidenceof bias is found for various groups residingin the United States (Figueroa, 1990). As aresult, the focus has now changed to implicatetest misuse as the major contributingfactor to improper assessment of individualand groups of children. This misuse, however,includes more than individuals. Government,school district, or other entitiesmay, for example, create unwise policiesthat inadvertently produce biased and untowardoutcomes for children, such as imposingstrict cut-off scores that affect assessmentand conceptualization of the case.FairnessThe term fairness refers to “… the principlethat every test taker should be assessed inan equitable way” (AERA, APA, NCME,1999, p. 175). Some issues related to achievingthis objective are discussed in this section.The renewed focus on test use comes