One method of delineating reading comprehension is T. C. Barrett's taxonomy, which contains the categories of literal comprehension, reorganization, inferential comprehension, and evaluation. In a study devised to test whether the categories of this taxonomy are hierarchical, a reading comprehension test developed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) was administered to approximately 9,000 14-year-old students in England, New Zealand, and the United States. The items of this test were classified by raters into one of the taxonomy categories and then analyzed by factor analysis, cluster analysis, and scalogram analysis. These methodologies were used to determine how each analysis explained the test items for each country and to observe the consistency across the methodologies. The findings revealed that none of the analyses strongly supported the proposed hierarchical structure of Barrett's taxonomy as measured by the IEA test items. (Tables of data are appended.) (Author/FL)