The following commentary was provided by Keith Widaman:
``The Holzinger and Swineford (1939) data have been used as a model data set by many investigators. For example, Harman (1976) used the ``24 Psychological Variables" example prominently in his authoritative text on multiple factor analysis, and the data presented under this rubric consisted of 24 of the variables from the Grant-White school (N = 145). Meredith (1964a, 1964b) used several variables from the Holzinger and Swineford study in his work on factorial invariance under selection. Joreskog (1971) based his work on multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis using the Holzinger and Swineford data, subsetting the data into four groups.
Rosseel, who developed the `lavaan' package for R, included 9 of the manifest variables from Holzinger and Swineford (1939) as a ``resident" data set when one downloads the `lavaan' package. Several background variables are included in this ``resident" data set in addition to 9 of the psychological tests (which are named x1 -- x9 in the data set). When analyzing these data, I found the distributions of the variables (means, SDs) did not match the sample statistics from the original article. For example, in the ``resident" data set in `lavaan', scores on all manifest variables ranged between 0 and 10, sample means varied between 3 and 6, and sample SDs varied between 1.0 and 1.5. In the original data set, scores ranges were rather different across tests, with some variables having scores that ranged between 0 and 20, but other manifest variables having scores ranging from 50 to over 300 -- with obvious attendant differences in sample means and SDs.
After a bit of snooping (i.e., data analysis), I discovered that the 9 variables in the ``resident" data set in `lavaan' had been rescored through ratio transformations. The ratio transformations involved dividing the raw score for each person on a given test by a particular constant for that test that transformed scores on the test to have the desired range.
I decided to perform transformations of all 26 variables so that two data sets could be available to interested researchers:"
holzinger.raw are the raws scores on all variables from Holzinger & Swineford (1939)
holzinger.swineford are rescaled scores on all variables from Holzinger & Swineford.
holzinger.dictionary is a list of the variable names in short and long form.
... Widaman continues:
``As several persons have noted, Harman (1976) used data only from the Grant-White school (N = 145) for his 24 Psychological Variables data set. In doing so, Harman replaced t03_frmbord and t04_lozenges with t25_frmbord2 and t26_flags, because the latter two tests were experimental tests that were designed to be more appropriate for this age level. This substitution is fine, as long as one analyzes data from only the Grant- White school. If one wishes to perform multiple-group analyses and uses school as a grouping variable (as Meredith, 1964a, 1964b, and Joreskog, 1971, did), then tests 25 and 26 should not be used."
``As have others, Gorsuch (1983) mentioned that analyses based on the raw data reported by Holzinger and Swineford (1939) will not produce statistics (means, SDs, correlations) that match precisely the values reported by Holzinger and Swineford or Harman (1976). Following Gorsuch, I have assumed that the raw data are correct. Applying factor analytic techniques to the raw data from the Grant-White school and to the summary data reported by Harman (1976) will produce slightly different results, but results that differ in only minor, unimportant details."
These data are interesting not just for the historical completeness of having the original data, but also as an example of suppressor variables. Age and grade are positively correlated, and scores are higher in the 8th grade than in the 7th grade. But age (particularly in months) is negatively correlated with many of the cognitive tasks, and when grade and age are both entered into regression, this negative correlation is enhanced. That is, although increasing grade increases cognitive performance, younger children in both grades do better than the older children.