Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment how to calculate FSIQ on WISC IV

Hi My son was recently tested and we were not given a FSIQ due to a large discrepancy with his WM which would result in his FSIQ not being a true reflection of his ability but the school and some programs will only recognise the FSIQ. Is there any one out there who can calculate his FSIQ for me? His scores are:

Verbal IQ>148
Perceptual 129
Working Memory 110
Processing speed 121
General ability index >147

Any help would be appreciated thanks

I think someone with access to the scoring manual/program would need all the scaled scores on the subtests to give you FSIQ. They might even need raw scores if your DS got more than one scaled 19 on a subtest and extended norms apply.

I don't have access to WISC scoring myself but I am sure someone on here does. What is the cutoff for your programs?

Was he tested privately or through the school? I'm guessing it was private testing, so fwiw you could ask the person who administered the test to either calculate FSIQ specifically for the school and/or write a brief letter to the school explaining what GAI is and why it's appropriate to use in place of FSIQ in this instance.

I also wouldn't be so sure the school district gifted staff isn't familiar with GAI - it's a fairly well-established measure and dips in either processing score or working memory aren't entirely unusual or uncommon among highly gifted kids. A classroom teacher might not be familiar with it, but someone somewhere on the g/t staff in the district should have heard of it

Best wishes,

polarbear

I don't have access to a scoring manual either, but FWIW, I'm positive that the FSIQ would be above 130 possibly by a good deal. Unless you are looking at programs that require 99.9th FSIQ scores, he should make the cut.

Thank you everyone for your replies. We had him tested privatly by a psyc as the school thinks he has ADHD and only wants to address the behaviour and not accelerate or place him in any of the gifted programs.

He needs to have a FSIQ of 130 to be considered gifted. If it helps here are his scaled scores as I don't have access to his raw scores.

Verbal
Similarities 19
Vocabulary 16
Comprehension 19

Perceptual
Block design 16
Picture concepts 17
Matrix reasoning 11

Working Memory
Digit span 11
Letter-number sequencing 13

Processing Speed
Coding 15
Symbol Search 12

thanks

I'm guessing that the FSIQ would be somewhere around 135.

I'm with the test administrator. FSIQ is pretty meaningless with that big a discrepancy. The test administrator may say that the Verbal IQ is the best estimate of cognitive potential in that case. Don't imagine that the FSIQ is a magic number that means more than it's meant to mean.

Personally, I'd be highly suspicious about any program that wouldn't take subscores, confidence intervals, or the rest of the report into account when making educational decisions. But then, I don't have a dog in this hunt.