The McCarthy Scales and Hispanic Children: A Review of Psychometric Research

Currently, there are over a dozen investigations of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities that have examined the psychometric properties of this cognitive test with Hispanic children. The purposes of this article are to review this knowledge base and to draw conclusions of the usefulness of the McCarthy as an assessment of intelligence for Puerto Rican and Mexican American children. The investigations reviewed include a wide range of McCarthy psychometric studies (e.g., reliability; construct validity; predictive validity) and diverse characteristics of children (e.g., age; language status). Four major conclusions emerge from this review: (a) for Puerto Rican children, the available literature, although encouraging, is too limited in quantity to make any strong conclusions about the McCarthy's utility; (b) for Mexican American children, the psychometric knowledge base is fairly substantial, indicating that the McCarthy has clear promise as a useful psychoeducational assessment tool for English-speaking children. In the case of Mexican American Spanish-speaking children, there is some utility, but interpretation of test performance must be made with extreme caution; (c) further comparative psychometric research on the conventional McCarthy and Spanish versions are recommended; and (d) because all the existing McCarthy research has been limited to normal Hispanic populations, research on special education populations is greatly needed, particularly how McCarthy performance translates to educational intervention.