Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WISC IV or WISC V

Hi - any info or advice on this wouldbe appreciated!

Our daughter will be having a psych educational assessment in one months time. She was assessed 4 years ago, had a GAI score of 148 on the WISC IV, and it confirmed that she is very dyslexic. She is very spatial and verbal, and will be 14y 2 m at the time of assessment. The main purpose of the second assessment is to document LDs in anticipation of needing accomodations for standard written tests.

My question is whether we should move forward with a WISC V or stay with the WISC IV. I really like the idea of apples to apples data between the assessments, but perhaps the changes in the WISC V are ones better suited to current needs. I also live in a country that does not yet have extended norms for the WISC V - would this be an issue because of her age?

I am finding very little good info on this online - any ideas or info would be very helpful.

A priori, I prefer the more recent norms, which in this case means the WISC-V. My personal take is also that the structure of the WISC-V is better defined than the IV, as it separates the spatial and fluid reasoning dimensions of the PRI into their own index scores. As to the extended norms, they are of limited value this close to the top of the age range (which ends at 16-11). There are four subtests in the GAI for which she could attain extended scale scores at this age, and she would have to score within a point of the maximum possible raw score on each of them to do so. There is actually a little more headroom in the WISC-V norms for many of these subtests. (I.e., you don't have to be perfect to score 18 or 19).

A child will get inflated scores on WISC IV due to the flynn effect.

Thanks for your replies abby and aeh!