ABSTRACT
This study reports a meta-analysis of the factor structure of Spielberger's (1980) Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI), taking culture and gender into account. The 20-item TAI is comprised of factorially derived eight-item subscales for measuring worry and emotionality. Kaiser's method for evaluating factor similarity was used to compare the TAI factor structures for 37 samples obtained by researchers from 11 different countries with the factor structure of males and females in the original English-language TAI. The effect size metric was the cosine of the angle between matching factors. For the 29 samples in which two distinctive factors were identified, the mean factor cosine was .984, indicating a very high degree of correspondence of the Worry and Emotionality factors obtained by other researchers with the factors for males and females in the original English-language TAI. These two factors were also found to be invariant when the 29 samples were divided into Euro-American and Asian cultural groups. Worry and Emotionality factors similar to those in the English-language TAI were also found in the 8 additional samples in which more than two factors were identified. The results suggest that the factor structure of the TAI is essentially invariant with respect to culture and gender.
