Measurement invariance of working memory measures across two Arab cultures

A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine the factorial structure of a battery of working memory measures across two Arab cultures (Kuwait and Egypt). The battery of tests was administered to a sample of 384 children: 192 primary-school Kuwaiti children (96 boys, 96 girls; M age = 10.0 yr., SD = 1.0) and 192 primary-school Egyptian children (96 boys, 96 girls; M age = 10.0 yr., SD = 1.2). The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariances across the two cultures. This implies that working memory can be conceptualized similarly by Kuwaiti and Egyptian children and was measured in the same way in both cultures. Both within-groups individual differences and between-groups differences in means reflected differences in the underlying latent construct.