Psychometrically
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Hello everyone! I am enrolled in an undergraduate psychological testing course and I am now working on a course assignment that explores psychometric and clinical features of WAIS-IV. Specifically the topics for the assignment include: theoretical foundation, test development, psychometrics, clinical/practical application/utility, and finally commentary on WAIS-IV's strengths and weaknesses. There is an enormous amount of literature related to WAIS-IV, so my hard drive is already overflowing with relevant research.
Nevertheless any comments or suggestions that might be offered to me by the forum would be greatly appreciated. From my reading of this forum's posts on WAIS-IV, it is clear that there are many seasoned psychological professionals here who might offer me insights that I could not retrieve from PsychInfo or elsewhere in the indexed knowledge base.
As a conversation starter perhaps we could discuss my concerns related to WAIS-IV test security. I realize from my reading of the forum that this is a sensitive topic, though it directly relates to reliability and validity and thus probably should be given some serious contemplation and somewhat open discussion. When I raised this concern with my course tutor, I was somewhat surprised that they considered any form of deliberate practice in order to prepare for WAIS-IV to invalidate the test. I counter-suggested that future WAIS technical and interpretation manuals should included "coached" reliability correlations in order to clarify how robust test scores are to score enhancing strategies. If IQ tests are as sensitive to coaching as suggested by my tutor's response, then why haven't there been greater efforts to develop subtests (perhaps generated by computers) that essentially could not be as readily prepared as the currently fixed subtests on WAIS-IV some of which have been administered for over a century (sometimes with little or no modification)?
Achievement style tests (such as SAT) are reasonably resistant to coaching effects because test items are derived from a large knowledge base which needs to be learned (i.e., crystallized intelligence). Yet, intelligence tests (such as WAIS-IV) include a number of sub-tests that are fluid intelligence based which might be allow for test enhancement by employing certain testing strategies.
Comments please!
Nevertheless any comments or suggestions that might be offered to me by the forum would be greatly appreciated. From my reading of this forum's posts on WAIS-IV, it is clear that there are many seasoned psychological professionals here who might offer me insights that I could not retrieve from PsychInfo or elsewhere in the indexed knowledge base.
As a conversation starter perhaps we could discuss my concerns related to WAIS-IV test security. I realize from my reading of the forum that this is a sensitive topic, though it directly relates to reliability and validity and thus probably should be given some serious contemplation and somewhat open discussion. When I raised this concern with my course tutor, I was somewhat surprised that they considered any form of deliberate practice in order to prepare for WAIS-IV to invalidate the test. I counter-suggested that future WAIS technical and interpretation manuals should included "coached" reliability correlations in order to clarify how robust test scores are to score enhancing strategies. If IQ tests are as sensitive to coaching as suggested by my tutor's response, then why haven't there been greater efforts to develop subtests (perhaps generated by computers) that essentially could not be as readily prepared as the currently fixed subtests on WAIS-IV some of which have been administered for over a century (sometimes with little or no modification)?
Achievement style tests (such as SAT) are reasonably resistant to coaching effects because test items are derived from a large knowledge base which needs to be learned (i.e., crystallized intelligence). Yet, intelligence tests (such as WAIS-IV) include a number of sub-tests that are fluid intelligence based which might be allow for test enhancement by employing certain testing strategies.
Comments please!
