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

Hi,
Dottie mentioned the "Extended norms" for WISC-IV a few days ago, and I was wondering... how often (and in what circumstances) do testers really use these when reporting the score? Does DYS accept them? I'm just curious and, like Dottie, a bit of a score junkie.

My own ds got 5 19's-- 4 in verbal and 1 in perceptual reasoning.

My tester never mentioned extended norms; do the testers popular for assessing the gifted use them as a matter of course?

I think they're a fairly recent thing, but if I understand it correctly, they should apply in any case where the kid can keep answering questions after they hit the regular endpoint. So in theory at least, the tester might still have the raw data around to calculate extended scoring on old data. Unfortunately I know that our tester stopped asking when DS reached the 19 because, he said, there wasn't any point in going on... so we'll have to be satisfied with the old fashioned kind!

How annoying! But how would the tester know a kid had hit a 19 during the test? Wouldn't they have to score it first?

Theoretically yes, but I'm guessing some testers have done this long enough that they can eyeball it. I should ask anyway, since he probably didn't cut off right at the single question that hit the 19 -- maybe we could squeeze a point or two out of it anyway... LOL

On the other hand, since he didn't have a whole lot of spread anyway (no really low scores dragging him down) I think the number we got is probably not too far off "reality" (whatever that is!) And there's really nothing else we could get for a higher score... Where we are now it's really more about achievement I think.

But I do go through phases of being really curious how high it might go if we had all the data....

Pearson sent me the technical report for the extended norms earlier this week - if anyone would like to PM me their email address I'd be happy to forward it.

I'd actually asked them about the compressed qualifying scores for LOG in WPPSI-III that are on the Hoagies site, but haven't managed to get myself clear about this yet. They may have mistaken me for someone who really understood much about this!

Excerpt:

These norms are used to further
differentiate highly gifted children (FSIQ or
GAI above 150) from gifted children (FSIQ
or GAI 130�150). The extended norms are
useful when a child�s score is the
maximum (ceiling) on two or more
subtests (e.g., obtains scaled scores of 18
or 19 points). These norms extend the
WISC�IV upper scaled score range to 28
points for subtests and 210 points for
composites. It is important to note that the
extended norms are not useful for most
children. Among the 2,200 cases in the
WISC�IV standardization sample, only
one child obtained a GAI score of 151 and
none obtained an FSIQ score of 150 or
higher. According to the bell curve, out of
20,000,000 same-age peers, only one
child would be expected to obtain a FSIQ
of 180 or higher.

DS8 was tested with extended norms too for his WISC-IV. I didn't try to find out more. Oops!
Just knew from the tester that he used it since DS has hit the ceiling for some.

According to my psychologist, ds7 topped out in some VCI subset and he used SB-5 to confirm his score. Is it how it's normally done?

Oh, I just finally realized that I have enough data to calculate this myself! Thanks, as usual, Dottie.

My test administrator actually had already figured the extended scores for my kids when I contacted her to get raw score data. She was going through her records calculating for all her high scorers. The EXIQ figures widened the very tiny gap that two of my kids had into a fairly large one.

Were you glad to have that information-- or would have have preferred to stick with the very tiny gap?

Do you see the "fairly large gap" played out in real life?