Truancy can have a detrimental impact on student outcomes. Risk assessments are used to identify behavioral and emotional problems associated with school truancy. Although imperative for informing decisions about student’s welfare, risk assessments generally lack substantial validity evidence. Specifically, supporting score interpretation across cultural groups through measurement invariance (MI) is needed for such assessments. This study examined MI, specifically factor invariance (FI), of the Washington Assessment of the Risks and Needs of Students (WARNS) across African American, Latinx, and Caucasian students using confirmatory factor analysis with traditional FI criteria and the equivalence testing (ET) procedure. Results from traditional criteria suggested that the factor structure is similar across groups. The ET procedure demonstrated minor model misspecifications.

中文翻译：

---

青年风险和需求评估的等效性测试

逃学会对学生的成绩产生不利影响。风险评估用于识别与逃学相关的行为和情绪问题。尽管必须告知有关学生福利的决定，但风险评估通常缺乏实质性的有效性证据。具体而言，此类评估需要通过测量不变性 (MI) 支持跨文化群体的分数解释。本研究使用验证性因子分析与传统 FI 标准和等效性检验 (ET) 检验了非裔美国人、拉丁裔和高加索学生的华盛顿学生风险和需求评估 (WARNS) 的 MI，特别是因子不变性 (FI)程序。传统标准的结果表明，各组之间的因子结构相似。