Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Extended norms?

Can someone explain to me when extended norms are used? DS6 got -on Similarities and Vocab but extended norms were not used, and he got -on MR (extended norms used on that subtest). Just wondering why extended norms wouldn't be used on the two -also.

Someone with more expertise can probably explain this better than me (aeh?), but I think you CAN score a "scaled score" 19 and not get any raw score points beyond it (a child can earn just enough points to get the scaled score of 19, but did not earn "additional" raw score points that would give them, say, a 21). Can you see the raw score? If you can, you can check the extended norms for WISC to see what the scaled score should be if extended norms are used. HTH!

Thanks Loy58! I can't see raw scores, but she put a symbol next to scaled scores to indicate whether extended norms were used and they were only used on MR, not V or Sim.

Is it possible that the discontinue rule was hot right at the 19 value? My child has one 19 without extended norms and he also had extended norms for an 18 because discontinue rule was not hit.

Examiners can use some clinical judgment when using extended norms. The rule of thumb is supposed to be two or more subtests in a cluster that reach the maximum standard subtests score. Which may be 18 or 19 depending on the age of the child and the subtests. So technically, 19s on two verbal subtests should have triggered extended norms, but it may be that recalculating using EN didn't result in a significant difference (if, as was suggested, she obtained few raw score points beyond the top scaled score), so she left it as standard norms.

The matrix reasoning score was sufficiently far above the standard norms that the examiner appears to have felt it was valuable information to report.

The discontinue rule shouldn't matter. You can get a low score without hitting discontinue rule (e.g. DS got two 15s this way; a lot of wrong answers, but not enough consecutive to discontinue.) What matters is if the scaled score is at the ceiling. Then it's possible that extended norms could give a higher score.

Thank you all. Yes, I don't think discontinue matters. My son didn't meet discontinue criteria on any of the verbal/performance subtests.

If can get raw scores, you can look it up yourself.

images.pearsonclinical.com/.../WISC-IV/WISCIV_TechReport_7.pdf [Big PDF file]