FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE LANGUEDGE™ TEST ACROSS LANGUAGE GROUPS

Abstract

This study assessed the factor structure of the LanguEdge™ test and the invariance of its factors across language groups. Confirmatory factor analyses of individual tasks and subsets of items in the four sections of the test, Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Writing, was carried out for Arabic-, Chinese-, and Spanish-speaking test takers. Two factors were identified, Speaking and a fusion of the other sections of the test. The number of factors, the factor loadings, and the factors' error variances were invariant in the three samples, although the correlations between the factors differed. The failure to find separate factors for each section of the LanguEdge test necessarily raises questions about the test's functioning that need to be resolved.