Since its introduction five years ago (1974), 113 articles or papers have appeared regarding the WISC-R, including empirical investigations of its nature, as well as its comparability with a variety of other measures of intelligence and achievement, including the WISC. While not all this research has been carefully done, two general conclusions can be derived from the review. First, although the WISC-R involves modification in administration, design, and presentation of items, as well as a complete restandardization, the literature substantially suggests that it remains very similar in nature to its predecessor, the WISC. Investigations of factor analytic structures, standard errors, reliability coefficients, and subtest intercorrelations support the conclusion that individuals perform on the WISC-R largely the same as they do on the WISC. The second conclusion points out (with few exceptions): consistently lower scores were obtained on the WISC-R than on several other measures, including the WISC, the WAIS, the Slosson Intelligence Test, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Stanford Binet, which was revised shortly before the WISC. These lower scores on the WISC-R may be due to a variety of influences, including examiner variance, an artifact of design leading to inflated scores on the WISC, and finally and most obviously, the restandardization of the scale. The amount of literature that has appeared over the five-year period suggests that practitioners and researchers are as interested in learning about the WISC-R as they were about the WISC. Despite this fact and the conclusion that the WISC and WISC-R are substantially similar, the present authors encourage caution in the overgeneralization of findings until additional literature develops.The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) was developed by David Wechsler in 1949 as a downward extension of the adult intelligence test called the Wechsler-Bellevue (Wechsler, 1939). The content for the WISC came largely from the Wechsler-Bellevue Form 11, although there were some easier items added to provide a floor for the younger child (Edwards, 1972). As the WISC Manual (Wechsler, 1949) points out, the test was intended for children from ages 5 through 15 and was standardized separately from the Wechsler-Bellevue Form 11.The WISC quickly'became one of the most commonly used tests with children who were having learning or emotional problems (Edwards, 1972). This test has continued in wide use and has been revised and restandardized as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) (Wechsler, 1974). A comparison of the two scales and a review of the current literature on the WISC-R follows.
STANDARDIZATION
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenEdwards (1972) points out that the WISC was standardized on 100 boys and 100 girls at each of the age levels from 5 through 15. An attempt was made to use children who were at mid-year age. The total sample consisted of 2,200 cases. Although many more children were tested, this final 2,200 cases...
