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ERIC Number: EJ1354118
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022
Pages: 34
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2079-3200
Available Date: N/A
Evaluation of the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test--Fourth Edition as a Measurement Instrument
Beaujean, A. Alexander; Parkin, Jason R.
Journal of Intelligence, v10 Article 30 2022
The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT-4) is the latest iteration of a popular instrument that psychologists employ to assess academic achievement. The WIAT-4 authors make both pragmatic and measurement claims about the instrument. The pragmatic claims involve being useful for identifying individuals in certain academic achievement-related groups (e.g., specific learning disability). The measurement claims are twofold: (a) the instrument's scores represent psychological attributes, and (b) scores transformed to standard score values have equal-interval properties. The WIAT-4 authors did not provide the evidence necessary to support the pragmatic claims in the technical manual, so we could not evaluate them. Thus, we limited our evaluation to the measurement claims for the composite scores. To do so, we used information in the technical manual along with some additional factor analyses. Support for the first measurement claim varies substantially across scores. Although none of the evidence is particularly strong, scores in mathematics and reading domains tend to have more support than the writing and total achievement scores. Support for the second claim was insufficient for all scores. Consequently, we recommend that psychologists wishing to interpret WIAT-4 composite scores limit those interpretations to just a few in the mathematics and reading domains. Second, psychologists should completely refrain from using any composite score in a way that requires equal-interval values (e.g., quantitative score comparisons). Neither of these recommendations necessarily disqualifies the scores from being useful for pragmatic purposes, but support for these uses will need to come from evidence not currently provided in the WIAT-4 technical manual.
MDPI AG. Klybeckstrasse 64, 4057 Basel, Switzerland. e-mail: indexing@mdpi.com; e-mail: jintelligence@mdpi.com; Web site: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jintelligence
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: N/A
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Wechsler Individual Achievement Test
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1920730
Author Affiliations: N/A