The psychometric properties of the working memory questionnaire in a South African young adult sample

The Working Memory Questionnaire (WMQ) was developed to assess everyday difficulties associated with working memory (WM) impairments. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the WMQ within a South African context. A cross-sectional research design was employed. Healthy young adults (n = 256) completed the WMQ and a demographic questionnaire online. A subsample (n = 69) also completed performance-based WM tasks (n-Back Task, Digit Span, and Symbol Span tests). The WMQ demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.91), with significant intercorrelations among domains. Gender and language emerged as relevant demographic variables: females reported greater symptom severity in storage and executive domains, and first-language English speakers reported higher levels of perceived difficulties in the attention domain and WMQ total score. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) did not support the original three-factor structure and the evidence for concurrent validity was limited. Statistically significant negative correlations between the WMQ Storage domain and all the n-Back tasks and the averaged z-scores of the WM tests were found. Only the 3-Back Task significantly and negatively correlated with all the WMQ scores. These findings support the internal reliability of the WMQ but put into question the applicability of its theoretical structure and concurrent validity for the South African context.