Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment New here: RIAS vs WISC V

My daughter, 7, was tested with the WISC V and scored a 129 overall GAI. Her teacher, and the school psychologist, felt that this was low for her and had her tested again using the RIAS.

The RIAS came back with an overall score of 158. Why such the vast difference in scores? Which one would be a more accurate result of her overall intellectual abilities?

Some background. She's a straight A student and an avid reader. She has an impeccable memory(especially visually). She taught herself to read around 3YO and is now reading at a 9th grade level.

With the WISC her highest scores were in the verbal areas. So, I am not sure if the RIAS tends to captivate that more.

Thanks!!

Generally speaking, the RIAS is more of a screening instrument than a comprehensive cognitive measure, with some evidence suggesting a tendency to inflate scores at the high end. I usually trust WISC results more than RIAS results, and, in fact, it is not recommended to use the RIAS for any kind of high-stakes decision-making. That being said, it is quite possible that a child might genuinely be underestimated on the WISC and more accurately measured on the RIAS.

One difference between the WISC-V and RIAS is that the the WISC includes Visual Spatial tasks in the GAI, while the RIAS is more similar to the Verbal Comprehension and Fluid Reasoning Indices. Was there any kind of diversity between her WISC-V index scores? The other big difference between the two tests is that the WISC-V has brand new norms, while the RIAS is 17 years old, which is good for at least 6 or 7 points right off the bat, and probably more, since there is some data suggesting that the Flynn effect (score inflation due to norm obsolescence) is more pronounced at the extreme right hand end of the bell curve. Unless, of course, you are talking about the RIAS-2, which was just released, in which case the norms are about equally new.

Another important factor is her age. Young children are much more likely to have large variances on formal testing, for many reasons, such as fatigue, inattention, not being in the mood, unfamiliarity with the testing process, feeling shy with an unfamiliar adult examiner, etc.

There is no way to know a priori which is the more accurate measure of her abilities, especially without any further detail (subtest performance, testing behavior, illness, emotional upset, anything that occurred that disrupted standardized administration, etc.). Though as a gross generalization, it would be reasonable to assume that it is more likely that one score is an underestimate than that the other is an overestimate. I am not quite making that judgement here, because of the screening nature of the RIAS, and its age.

Is there some reason it makes a difference? Such as access to services. Because if there are no high stakes decisions riding on her exact score, I would focus on the main takeaway, which is that she is a very bright young lady, who will need ongoing attention to maintaining academic challenge, based on her actual academic instructional levels in each subject area.

Thanks for the reply.

Our school will not accept her into the gifted program unless she has a minimum score of 130. They accept a wide variety of test, including the RIAS.

Per the examiner of the WISC she did develop repport, but I'd disagree as I heard her stumbling her words and getting anxious. She's a naturally shy, cautious, reserved kid. She has major perfectionist issues and if she felt like she wasn't doing as well as she thought she could, that also could contribute to her scores, too.

Without pulling out the WISC scores I know her lowest score was in coding whereas her highest scores were in comprehension and verbal areas. This is indicative of her studies as well.

ballet,

It sounds like your perception of the WISC scores is that they are qualitatively consistent with the real-life presentation of your daughter, but perhaps not quantitatively entirely consistent. That, and your observation of performance anxiety-type behaviors during testing, suggest that the WISC results are probably a bit of a low estimate, but not so far off that they misrepresent her pattern of strengths and weaknesses.

I know this doesn't really help to determine which scores to trust more...but at least it sounds like there is some confirmatory value to the WISC-V results, in terms of her learning profile.

If the school accepts the RIAS, then you don't need the WISC-V results for access, anyway, and can use the data as supplemental. BTW, a lot of perfectionist kiddos tank coding, because it's timed, and scored for number of items completed, but not precision, and they make the opposite trade-off.