Estimates of the Internal Consistency of a Factorially Complex Composite

Abstract

In this study of 852 subjects between four and nine years of age an endeavor was made to estimate the degree of consistency among the elements comprising Borelli-Oldron's Performance Scale by taking into account two levels of analysis: item clusters and subtest clusters. On the first level, handling as variables the items of each of the subtests, alpha coefficients were calculated to estimate the internal consistency of each cluster. On the second level, in which variables constituted subtests that conformed to hypothesized dimensions, every one of the factors was confirmed in an earlier publication. The estimation procedure of multicomponent reliability put forward by Werts, Rock, Linn, and Joreskog (1978) was used. Given that this technique makes it possible to obtain consistency estimates of a composite scale made up of tests clustered in different factors, it was also applied to the full scale.