The Concurrent Validity and Factor Structure of Seventeen Structure-of-Intellect Measures Reflecting Behavioral Content

Abstract

For a sample of 152 children (76 boys and 76 girls) in grades 2 to 6 without identifiable learning disabilities, interest centered upon whether measures of empathy and social sensitivity as conceptualized within the behavioral segment of Guilford's structure-of-intellect model would exhibit concurrent validities with a criterion measure represented by a standardized test of academic performance in basic skills and would provide identifiable factor dimensions within the behavioral domain. Although tests constructed to represent various hypothesized factors in cognition of behaviors tended to exhibit low correlations with measures devised to portray hypothesized factors of divergent production of behaviors, these cognition scales did display higher concurrent validity coefficients than those registered by divergent production measures. When heterogeneity associated with grade level (age) was statistically controlled, all six measures of cognition of behaviors continued to yield statistically significant validity coefficients (p < .01), but only two of the ten tests of divergent production of behaviors that had revealed significant (zero-order) validity coefficients provided statistically reliable (first-order partial) validity coefficients (p < .05). Factor analytic results afforded a separation of measures of cognition of behaviors from those of divergent production of behaviors.

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