Beaujean A Alexander, Parkin Jason R
Psychology & Neuroscience Department, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798-7334, USA.
Department of Teaching, Learning and Social Justice, Seattle University, Seattle, WA 98122, USA.
J Intell. 2022 May 22;10(2):30. doi: 10.3390/jintelligence10020030.
The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT-4) is the latest iteration of a popular instrument that psychologists employ to assess academic achievement. The WIAT-4 authors make both pragmatic and measurement claims about the instrument. The pragmatic claims involve being useful for identifying individuals in certain academic achievement-related groups (e.g., specific learning disability). The measurement claims are twofold: (a) the instrument's scores represent psychological attributes, and (b) scores transformed to standard score values have equal-interval properties. The WIAT-4 authors did not provide the evidence necessary to support the pragmatic claims in the technical manual, so we could not evaluate them. Thus, we limited our evaluation to the measurement claims for the composite scores. To do so, we used information in the technical manual along with some additional factor analyses. Support for the first measurement claim varies substantially across scores. Although none of the evidence is particularly strong, scores in mathematics and reading domains tend to have more support than the writing and total achievement scores. Support for the second claim was insufficient for all scores. Consequently, we recommend that psychologists wishing to interpret WIAT-4 composite scores limit those interpretations to just a few in the mathematics and reading domains. Second, psychologists should completely refrain from using any composite score in a way that requires equal-interval values (e.g., quantitative score comparisons). Neither of these recommendations necessarily disqualifies the scores from being useful for pragmatic purposes, but support for these uses will need to come from evidence not currently provided in the WIAT-4 technical manual.
韦氏个别成就测验（WIAT - 4）是心理学家用于评估学业成就的一种常用工具的最新版本。WIAT - 4的作者对该工具提出了务实性和测量性的主张。务实性主张涉及该工具在识别某些与学业成就相关的群体（如特定学习障碍）中的个体时有用。测量性主张有两个方面：（a）该工具的分数代表心理属性，（b）转换为标准分值的分数具有等距属性。WIAT - 4的作者在技术手册中未提供支持务实性主张所需的证据，所以我们无法对其进行评估。因此，我们将评估局限于对综合分数的测量性主张。为此，我们使用了技术手册中的信息以及一些额外的因素分析。对第一个测量性主张的支持在不同分数之间差异很大。虽然没有任何证据特别有力，但数学和阅读领域的分数往往比写作和总体成就分数获得更多支持。对第二个主张的支持对所有分数来说都不足。因此，我们建议希望解释WIAT - 4综合分数的心理学家将这些解释限制在数学和阅读领域的少数几个分数上。其次，心理学家应完全避免以需要等距值的方式使用任何综合分数（例如，定量分数比较）。这两条建议都不一定使这些分数在务实目的上失去用处，但对这些用途的支持将需要来自WIAT - 4技术手册中目前未提供的证据。
