Examination of Select Psychometric Characteristics of Independent Living Scales Factors

The purpose of this article was to examine select psychometrics of two factors—Performance/Information and Problem Solving—of Managing Money and Health and Safety, two subscales of the Independent Living Scales (ILS). These two factors are designed to assess different cognitive functions. We examined (1) the internal reliability of the subscales and (2) correlations of these subscales with other neuropsychological measures in two samples. One sample consisted of college students (N = 105) and the other of individuals undergoing a court-ordered competency assessment (N = 71) with a range of various developmental, psychiatric, and/or neurological disorders. For both factors on both subscales, we found that the internal reliabilities for the college sample were poor but adequate for the competency-based cases. In contrast, our findings were similar for the correlational analyses for both subscales, where the pattern of correlations was generally not significantly different between both factors and several neuropsychological measures. These tests varied across samples but were assessed a range of abilities including intelligence, attention, processing speed, set shifting, mathematics, verbal fluency, and executive functioning. Implications of these finding are discussed as are ideas for future research.