Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WJ III Broad Scores calculation?? Confused...

Some of it is propietary/confidential information, but one can glean certain parts of it. (I'm pretty sure it's age-normed mot grade-normed.)

Everyone who has a WJ-III (ach) report, check out the "W" column, if your report has one.

It appears that the W's for the "BROAD" and "BRIEF" and othe combinations are indeed simply the (unweighted) arithmetic mean, i.e. the "average" or the W's for the component tests.

Can others of you check to see if you can confirm this pattern.

We don't know how to get W's from raw scores (and age) but that's not really important.

What's a more important unknown for this discussion is how W is translated to SS (Standard Score(?)). It's probably a linear function (with rounding), but it could be a different linear function for each test (and hence for the combinations of tests like "BROAD" and "BRIEF"). One could try to deduce the coefficient from various examples of score combinations.

I have W scores (and percentiales and age equivalents, etc etc.) BUT, I don't have a standard Broad Math score. If I give you the W score can you give me that?

KelliB, I've tried to figure out how to calculate the "Broad Scores," too, because DS5 took the WJ-III Ach. when he was 4.5 y.o. to get into a summer program. From what I understand, he took all of the subtests to have the "Broad Reading" and "Broad Math" calculated. He did very well, but at the time, I had no reason to have "Broad Scores" calculated - so they never were. The person who gave the test has since retired and I don't think it would be easy to have this same person calculate the scores.

I'd love to know if there was a way to calculate the broad scores without having to go pay someone else to do it. Like you, I've searched, but have never had them calculated because I have no idea how to do it! I strongly suspect that at least the reading scores would be very high (this was before DS became very interested in math, so these were lower). I doesn't look like any "writing" subtests were given, but this makes sense, given his age at the time of testing.

Does anyone know if achievement scores performed at 4.5 y.o. would be valid for DYS anyway, or does the child need to be 5 y.o. when the test is done?

I also would love to know if anyone here knows how to calculate broad scores!

My DD also has what appear to be odd broad score calculations. I have wondered the same question as the OP for a while and was not able to find any answers. It seem odd to me (and I am certainly not a mathematician) that the Broad RPI score is lower then any of the RPI's in the subset. I figured it had to be something with not having a representative sample of scores.

22B - my W scores for the broad scores are indeed the average of the W scores for the subset.
FWIW

Letter Word ID RAW 40, W 467, RPI 161 SS 100/90
Reading Fluency RAW 21, W 482, RPI 142 SS 98/90
Passage Comp RAW 19, W 469, RPI 140 SS 100/90

Broad Reading W 473, RPI 134, SS 100/90

I just found the WJ III Assessment Service bulletin #11, which states "The W difference is the value from which standard scores, percentile ranks, and relative proficiency indexes are derived."
You can read it here:
www.riverpub.com/products/wjIIIComplete/pdf/WJ3_ASB_11.pdf

Since it's all done by computer, it shouldn't be a big deal to ask for W scores from my tester, right?

Also, from what I've read it sounds like the tester can choose between age or grade norms.

The reading scores don't look right to me--my ds7 got a 135 in reading and the scores were lower. In fact, if I'm reading it correctly, it seems that the writing subtest scores are lower than reading and the broad written composite is higher. Your DS's reading comprehension score seems highly exceptional for a six year old. It seems like the broad reading score should be at least in the mid 140s and meet the Davidson requirements.

My paperwork from the tester agrees with polarbear that the broad scores include the three (each) subtests. However, my report also shows additional items including an oral language score, and two seemingly separate scores 1) math calculations (slightly higher than the calculations in the subtest) and 2) written expression (slightly higher than the writing fluency subtest).

I know that oral language includes following directions, and story recall, and story recall delayed. I don't understand the written expression and math calculations, separated out from the 3 broad scores. I can only think that they are optional subtests administered by the doctor or DS hit some kind of ceiling and they have a separate calculation.

You're not alone, I found it difficult to interpret the results.