Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment OlSAT reliable?

My DS12 OLSAT score is 125. His 10 year old OLSAT score was 150 & Kbit2 was 145. His OLSAT in 7 year old was 125. How should I interprete this results?
Is my son gifted or not?
Is anybody out there who has the score fluctuation like my DS?

Welcome.

I think you will find that this is fairly common. The OLSAT is not that comparable to individually-administered comprehensive measures of intelligence. Actually, the KBIT2 is also more of a screener, though as an individually-administered instrument, I would consider it better for this purpose than the OLSAT.

Aeh is the expert, and absolutely correct.

The OLSAT measures ability, in fact SAI stands for School Ability Index. The OLSAT is not considered an IQ test, it is a used as a group screener test that catches some kids who are gifted and children who are high achievers. That said, both my kids have tested HG and neither passed the OLSAT.

Scores on all tests can fluctuate based on how your child felt that day, if he/she was tired, if there were distractions during the test (the OLSAT is a group test) etc.

If you truly want to know if your child is gifted, I would suggest you have him tested with the WISC IV or V which would give you a much more accurate picture.

Thanks for welcoming me and for your kind comment. It's good to know about OLSAT. As Kib2 is screening tool, I wonder, if my DS take Kbit2 again this year, can he have different (much lower score) as well?

THanks for sharing your kids' case and detailed information about OLSAT. Is WISCIV the most reliable IQ test for the most of the kids? Well, we will not have a choice about that since the school district only offers WISC IV but want to be sure if it is the right one for my DS. Thanks.

Agree with the above and I found this explanation from Hoagies Gifted extremely helpful to understand the group test results:

"Group intelligence tests are commonly used as screening measures, to see if the child should move to a full gifted assessment. They are commonly administered by teachers. Group tests are generally normed on populations of all children, with relatively few gifted children among the mix. When taking group intelligence tests, gifted kids often "over-think" the questions, and perhaps make wrong selections. And since there's no individual tester to clarify unusual answers, the gifted kids often score lower on group intelligence tests.

The most common group intelligence tests, OLSAT and CogAT, are used in districts and programs across the country. Notable gifted professionals recommend them for screening potentially gifted children. However, a small study noted a potential problem with the OLSAT and very gifted children. While the correlation between group and individual intelligence tests is quite high for average scores, in this study that correlation almost disappeared for gifted scores. This means that while an average child will score very similarly on a group IQ test and an individual IQ test, a gifted child may not score similarly at all. And the study suggests that this group test may even result in a negative correlation for some gifted children: the more gifted the child, the lower the group ability test score! ["Investigations of the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test to Predict WISC-R Full Scale IQ for Referred Children" by Anna H. Avant and Marcia R. O'Neal, University of Alabama, Nov. 1986, ED286883] Though this study is no longer available from AskERIC, it can be obtained on microfiche from most education university libraries.

A 2001 study using the OLSAT noted a problem with the OLSAT and twice exceptional (gifted and learning disabled) students. A Comparison of the WISC-III and the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test with Students Referred for Learning Disabilities, by Thomas Guilmette et. al., Providence College and Brown University School of Medicine, showed that LD kids tended to score an average of 7.5 points lower on the OLSAT than their WISC-III full scale IQ scores. This study is available in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, or for a few dollars from SAGE Publications on the 'net.

"The use of the OLSAT-6 in estimating overall intellectual abilities in children with suspected learning disabilities is not encouraged because it may frequently underestimate students' actual abilities, which may result in fewer appropriate referrals for further educational and intellectual abilities." "As with previous studies with gifted students, our research indicates that the OLSAT-6 appears to underestimate WISC-III FSIQ." -- Guilmette et. al., A Comparison of the WISC-III and the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test with Students Referred for Learning Disabilities"

Our local schools give CogAT, but for reasons I have never understood, more children have high scores when the test is given just before middle school than when it is given to primary school students (according to district statistics).

If they only offer WISC IV, then I would take that. The WISC V is the more recent version of the test, and someone else better versed in this than I am (aeh?) could better speak to you about the differences between the two tests.

The WISC-IV is still fine, though not preferred. It's been over a year since the WISC-V came out, so ideally, that would be better, but it's only just over a year. Primarily, the difference is one of norm obsolescence. WISC-IV norms are over a decade old now, while WISC-V norms came out in 2014. Using old norms tends to slightly inflate scores, with the Flynn effect (rising IQ scores over time) not quite as predictable with GT students.

The WISC-V also has a slightly different factor structure, with the main difference being that the nonverbal domain has been split out more clearly. The WISC-IV combines visual spatial and nonverbal reasoning into the same index, which sometimes obscures strength in one of those areas, if the other is not equally strong. The WISC-V separates them into the Visual Spatial Index and Fluid Reasoning Index. Students with motor or spatial deficits, but high abstract thinking, often benefit from having these domains separated.

Thank you all for the detailed information about screening test. The school has WISC V and we decided to take that although it's fairly new to our school distrcit and school district.