Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment above the 99.9th

Hi all - this is purely for my own curiosity, now that I have been rested (babies!!!) and I'm looking back through DD4's test results, I note that the tester has written she is "above" the 99.9th - she did ceiling one test and reach the test ceiling for 2 others (just not beyond. When I asked her how gifted she was she got a bit funny as though it was a bit rude to ask and just said "very".

So just wondering as it was the WPPSI 3 would there have been a way to find out how far above the 99.9th she was or is that just not done now.

Hi there,

I fear I don't have any information for you either. But I have always thought it was funny that the WISC-IV information article about extended norms lists the percentiles for the extended norm IQs and GAIs and every single one of them just says >99.9 percent. You do have a feeling that if there was a reason to do that extended norming, there should be a reason to put more information behind the result. I.e., GAI of XXX is 99.9xxx percentile. But I haven't seen it!

Hopefully wiser folks will have a more useful answer for you. But I do think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. I suspect that tester just hasn't seen that sort of result, and didn't even know how to answer you. Not nice of her to get snippy with you, though.

Sue

I think the problem may be that the test is not evidently reliable for teasing out the differences beyond 99.9%. I recall being told that the younger the test-taker, the less reliable for differentiating the far right-tail.

No tests give any result more detailed than >99.9%

It's just too far into the tail of the distribution, they're too uncommon to give good stats. Aeh has posted the stats for the norming samples for (I think) the WISC IV, and they're way off to the left. Even the extended norm sample isn't all that high scoring.

thanks all - guess if anyone asks me how gifted I can give a wry smile and a nod and say veeerrryyyy

Well I got no indication from her that it was out of the ordinary at all. Just a stock standard GT score, however the more out and about we go the more we notice the diff so you could be right.