Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment EG/PG definition?

Could someone please help me make sense of the table in this link:

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/highly_profoundly.htm

I see this article referenced a lot, and I find it confusing. It looks like the threshold for PG is a lot higher when the extended norms are used? So a kid who gets 152 but doesn't hit any ceilings is profoundly gifted, but a kid who gets 160 but hits ceilings is EG? Is it just a difference in how people name it? Is there an accepted convention for where EG or PG begins?

Thanks.

I am not a testing expert... but fwiw I took a quick look at the link to see what the data was you were looking at... and I'm guessing that you're looking at the first table and comparing apples to oranges (WISC-IV with extended norms column) to the SB-5 column (?). If that's the comparison.. they are two different tests, it's not a comparison of WISC with and without extended norms.

BUT... then I became very curious about something - I thought that the way the "HG vs EG vs PG" would have been grouped would have been by percentile rank (since actual IQ scores are not exactly equivalent across tests)... but if you look at 99.9th percentile as listed on the DYS qualifications, 99.9 for WISC-IV is 145, and 99.9 for SB-V... but in the Hoagies table, 145 on the WISC is labeled the low end of HG, and 145 on the SB-V is the cut-off at the high end of HG, one point below EG.

JMO, but I've never put much thought or meaning into what a poster or anyone labels as HG/EG/etc. I'm more of a numbers person

polarbear

There were some respected testers/experts who felt that gifted cutoffs moved much lower on the SB with the introduction of the SB5. And that is reflected in the hoagies chart.

I asked the gifted specialist tester who tested my girls with the SB5 about whether this and whether it was correct or whether they considered the SB5 and WISC4 to be more directly comparable. While acknowledging that it's just one day, the two systems test slightly different things and a child might be better served by one test or the other, our tester was very clear she considered 145 on the SB5 to be assumed equal to 145 on the WISC4, no more, no less. She and her business partner do not consider a child HG on the SB5 before 140 (possibly 138). I know of only one child this practice has described as EG (FSIQ 150+) and none they have described as PG.

I also find it funny that in Australia we regularly encounter the attitude that SB5 scores mean nothing because "EVERYONE is gifted on the SB" while it seems in the US that people often consider the SB5 a "harder" test than the WISC4...

For what it's worth my kids have only margin of error differences in verbal iq between the SB and wechsler tests(2-3 points), which I think can be entirely attributed to liking the SB tester better and so being more verbally responsive. They both do better on the non verbal in the SB, I don't know why, that I assume is a family quirk. The SB5 is of course much less diagnostic with regard to working memory/processing type issues.

Thanks for these responses. It is the first table in the article that confuses me. What I am particularly curious about is the discrepancy in the levels between the wisc-v (first column) and the wisc-v with extended norms (second column). It looks like the threshold for EG is much higher if extended norms are applied, which doesn't make sense to me. Is it just that these are two different gauges made up by different people?

I think that is to do with the fact that introducing the extended norms introduces room for higher numbers but that changes how the scale gets broken up (very simplified explanation sorry). Extended norms allow you to produce a higher number that acknowledges the material the child was able to do that took them beyond the standard ceiling of the various subtests, but that extended scoring system is not directly comparable to the standard scoring system anymore, or therefore to the scores of other comparable tests.

The basic story with extended norms is that they correct a reporting error caused by the low ceilings. The correction takes place by adding to the scores so all of the higher scores become inflated.

Without extended norms, the margin of error for IQs from like 70 to 130 might be +/-3 pts (making the margins up for example.)

But from 130 on, the margins get larger. So you get to 160 before extended it might be +/-20 pts. With extended norms the margin of error narrows for the higher scores; such that 160 might now be +/-5 pts.

Since these are +/- errors and no scores are lowered, the meaning of higher scores are decreased to reflect the full population of scores with extended norms.

Imagine two kids, one scores a 125 and the other scores 130. The 125 has some lower scores in processing speed and working memory, but also completely maxed block design and picture concepts. With extended norms (the full 26 pts rather than non-extended 19 contributes for both of those subtests) the 125 becomes a 142. Every score raised lowers the % of population at the scores it now surpasses.

Not sure if that answers your question or not.

Yup! That definitely makes sense now. Thanks so much!

So if a child has a score of 145 on SBV, 99.9th... what would you say? NO extended norms. Hit ceilings all over the place. I am confused because some scales say HG, i have seen PG, I know it's only a label and not important at all but I am kind of curious.
I have another child at 99.5th, so HG for that child...is that right?
I don't plan on using the labels in public LOL but it would just help to categorise things in my mind.

When you're talking about PG, labels are important--the needs of a PG kid are greater--but the concept of a cut off score is not particularly useful.

When public schools evaluate a student to see if the student has a disability, they have to consider confidence intervals, observation of student behaviors at school and at home, as part of a variety of sources of information. They have to construct a plan and a program that meets the educational needs of the person, not the category. Certainly the same principles should apply to gifted education.

Dr. Deborah Ruf's book Five Levels of Gifted is rich in qualitative descriptions of the developmental milestones of gifted students. If I were trying to figure out if my child was PG, I'd skip the score tables and read that book.

For us, the numbers and the labels helped get needed educational services. I really don't think it's possible to distinguish too much at the 99.9 tails. That's why you may see many people here talking about their HG+ kiddo. Once you're beyond HG, you are likely to share at least some traits/issues with the kids at the ++ as well. If you took 100 kids who scored 99.9, there would be 100 different profiles and 100 different learning styles. IMO, what is important when you notice you've got a kid who is at the extremes is to do your best as a parent to try to find a peer group for your kiddo (even if just once a year), find the best educational options that work for your kiddo and your family, and above all be flexible.

Note - The Davidson Institute's Young Scholar Program describes the population they serve as profoundly gifted. If you look just at IQ, some of their accepted scores fall below what some charts list as PG. But they do not look at just IQ scores, but achievement and/or portfolio as well. It is hard to define, and within the PG population is a wide range of kids with a wide range of needs.