Teaching WAIS—R administration skills: Comparison of the {mastery} model to other existing clinical training modalities.

Self Cite

Professional mandates, such as the Standards for Educational and PsychologicalTests (APA., 1974), are but one source of demands for accurate administration of psychological tests. In spite of calls for precision, administration competencies for such widely used tests as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) remain low. Moon, Fantuzzo, and Gorsuch (1986) observed an administration accuracy of only 67% for a group of graduate students who had completed WAIS-R administration training at APA-approved internship training sites. These data are reanalyzed to yield a list of the most tenacious WAIS-R administration errors. Common errors that persisted after self-instruction are compared with the errors that persisted after additional training. Practical training implications are discussed.In the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) manual (Wechsler, 1981), Wexler cautioned that test administration must be conducted with rigorous conformity to standardized procedures and that valid results depend on compliance with established administration and scoring criteria. Indeed, competent administration of standardized tests such as the WAIS-R is viewed as the most rudimentary assessment skill (Hanna, Bradley, & Holen, 1981). It is so rudimentary that training supervisors often assume that trainees can simply read the manual and give the test (a self-instruction approach to

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Frequent WAIS-R administration errors: An ignored source of inaccurate measurement.

Moon

Blakey²,

Gorsuch³

et al. 1991

Self Cite

“…Failure to accurately record responses and times, inappropriate questioning, and nonstandard manipulation of testing materials are common administration errors (Moon, Blakey, Gorsuch, & Fantuzzo, 1991). Among the performance subtests, Block Design has been noted as prone to administration error (Moon, Fantuzzo, & Gorsuch, 1986; Stewart, 1987). We believe that a seldom-acknowledged but frequently occurring error with the Block Design subtest involves nonadherence to the specific requirements for surface variety when the blocks are presented.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Administration error in presenting the WAIS—R blocks: Approximating the impact of scrambled presentations.

Thompson¹,

Bulow²

1994

Examiners commonly scramble the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised blocks without adhering to surface variety requirements specified in the manual. The standardized block presentation and an extreme departure from the standardized procedure were compared using 60 normal adults as subjects. Method of block presentation did not result in performance differences for raw score, number of items passed or failed, or mean time for completed designs. Neither split-half reliability coefficients nor performance as a function of IQ, age, or gender were influenced by method of block presentation. The implications for practitioners are discussed.

“…Researchers have discovered that the most effective approaches for teaching cognitive assessment use a combination of teaching strategies (Moon, Fantuzzo, & Gorsuch, 1986; Slate & Jones, 1989). The design and intervention strategies of this study were influenced significantly by the Slate and Jones (1989) study.…”

Section: Classroom Instructional Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving graduate student performance in cognitive assessment: The saga continues.

McQueen¹,

Meschino²,

Pike³

et al. 1994

Investigators have concluded that excessive numbers of errors in test administration and scoring are routinely committed by both graduate students and practicing psychologists. Developing new methods for teaching assessment is viewed as a major means of improving competency. Unlike previous studies, this investigation examined the impact of both lecture and laboratory interventions designed to improve graduate student performance in assessment. Interventions consisted of weekly lecture quizzes and a variety of laboratory interventions. The results suggest that the interventions used can significantly improve students' lecture and laboratory performance when compared with controls.The American Psychological Association asserts that psychological testing continues to maintain an important place within the profession of psychology (Matarazzo, 1990). The emphasis placed on testing by psychology graduate programs, internship agencies, and inpatient mental health facilities supports the continuing importance of testing within the profession (Tipton, Watkins, & Ritz, 1991). However, research focusing on the level of psychometric proficiency exhibited by clinical and school psychologists, as well as psychology graduate students, consistently indicates that these groups routinely make unacceptably high frequencies of administrative and scoring errors on a variety of psychological instruments (Moon, Blakey, Gorsuch, & Fantuzzo, 1991). Slate and Hunnicutt (1988) offered several reasons to account for this unacceptably high error rate, including (a) inadequate training, (b) lack of appropriate testing supervision, (c) failure to appreciate and adhere to standardized procedures, and (d) carelessness. In a later study (Slate, Jones, & Murray, 1991), additional errors were identified: (a) miscalculating chronolog-WILLIAM MCQUEEN received his PhD from the University of South Carolina in 1970. He serves on the graduate faculty at the Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, where, among other things, he teaches cognitive assessment. RICHARD MESCHINO received his PsyD from Biola University in 1992. Currently he is a faculty member at the California School of Professional Psychology-Los Angeles. PATRICIA PIKE received her PhD from the University of Hawaii in 1979. She currently serves on the Rosemead School of Psychology and Biola University faculty and is the Editor of the Journal of Psychology and Theology. PAUL POELSTRA received his PhD from Claremont Graduate School in 1973. As a Biola University faculty member, he teaches in the areas of experimental psychology and statistics and serves as Dean of the summer session.