Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Testing Through a University

I'd like to know if anyone has had a good experience using a local university to test their child.

Who do we contact within the university? The psych department head?

You may wish to check the website of the local university.

For example, University of Oregon Department of Psychology lists its clinic services, which do not seem to include IQ testing.

Oregon State University College of Liberal Arts School of Psychological Science lists many areas of research but does not seem to list a clinic.

Pacific Oregon University School of Professional Psychology lists Assessment & Testing Services in Hillsboro and Portland through its Pacific Psychology and Comprehensive Health Clinics.

I've heard of positive assessments and insightful reports. However, this may depend upon the family's reason for testing, and the tester's familiarity with the circumstances which your child presents with. It is often posted that the assessment experience is most beneficial and insightful when conducted by someone familiar with giftedness.

Thanks, indigo. I couldn't find any specific mention of testing gifted kids on any nearby university's site and just thought perhaps I wasn't looking in the right department, but now see that it's just not available nearby.

I found Dr. Brittany Ward in Medford and may give her a call. Her real specialty seems to lie in helping children who suffer from the effects of trauma, though.

(Continuing on the course the school is giving DS may qualify him.)

I used a local university as they had very discounted prices. Yes, I contacted the pysch services department (they do counseling too). We worked with a graduate student who was supervised by a PhD. Overall, it was OK - we got results (WISC, WJ) but it probably would have been a bit more helpful to work with someone knowledgeable about gifted kids. I didn't feel like the grad student could really offer much insight as far as the analysis. It seemed very copy/paste. YMMV.

When I was in college all of the grad students in psych needed to actually do testing as part of their course requirements. Since all psych students had to volunteer as test subjects, I had fun taking a bunch of tests. I would look for a school that offers graduate programs in educational psychology or early childhood development. I'm not sure if all schools have ed psych under psych.

One possible carrot to offer is that your kid is likely at an extreme they wouldn't often see.

I would look to speak to the departmental secretary first as they are often a well-spring of information. They may either have an answer or get you to the right person.

Caveat about grad students giving practice assessments: um, they're practice assessments.

When I was in grad school, I did not give any of my practice examinees formal results, on the grounds that my lack of clinical (or even technical) fluency made the results low in validity. I reported (other than to my professors) only in terms of general categories, and never on paper.

What you are looking for, actually, is post-doctoral fellows doing their year of APA-required clinical internship in an on-campus clinic. Cheaper than a board-certified psych, definitely under the supervision of a licensed psych, and likely to be more skilled than a pre-doctoral grad student.

If you do look for grad programs, you'll be looking for clinical psych, counseling psych, ed psych, school psych, neuropsych (often a post-doc cert). Some schools they may be housed in include psych, education, child/human development.

I saw a study being advertised on a local listserv for parents that offered assessment of intellectual ability and social skills at the local university, so I volunteered my son. We ended up with DAS-II scores that qualified him for DYS plus a gift card. I'd say that was a win, although I do wonder how he would do on the WISC.

This is what DS's testing entailed at a major university. We had an actual neuropsych looking through his records and he spent about 30-45 min. with DS but the rest of the testing was done by a fellow. There was also a student who interviewed me and filled out parent inventories while testing was done on DS. It wasn't to test for giftedness though and this particular psych sees only specific types of cases--in DS's case he had a head injury and our insurance paid for all the testing. I don't think he would see someone just to give an IQ test and I'm not sure that the fellows would either. But maybe there are other universities that do this.