“Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE)” is recently important issue of global competition. But numerous world KBE Scorecards (i.e., APEC, OECD and World Bank) still retain differences in terms of country ranking. Are indicators chosen by above reports reflective of real KBE competitiveness? How can we reconcile the differences? We need to re-examine all KBE reports through construct validation (i.e., convergent and discriminant validities) and reliability testing. The purpose of this study is to apply confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to decompose variations in KBE assessment into three sources: variation due to “methods” (i.e., sources of reports), variation due to “traits” (i.e., indictors of KBE), and pure random errors. The analytical results have indicated that modified KBE assessment methodology makes it easy for our national efforts toward upgrading international competitiveness to find their exact focus.