White racial identity attitude scale measure racial identity?

Competing interpretations of the structure of the White Racial Identity Attitude Scale (WRIAS; J. E. Helms & R. T. Carter, 1990) were assessed in 2 investigations. First, a meta-analysis of scale intercorrelations and internal reliability estimates indicated that, after correction for measurement error, intercorrelations between some scales were equal to unity, suggesting that the structure of the WRIAS is less complex than the theory of White racial identity it is assumed to measure. Second, confirmatory factor analysis of 2 data sets likewise revealed that scale structures found in the data are more parsimonious than those suggested by theory. Although it remains unclear which construct or constructs are actually measured by the instrument, interpretations of the WRIAS as composed of 5 meaningful dimensions are unsupported.