Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition Verbal short forms for children with visual impairments

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate WISC-III Verbal short forms for school-age children identified as visually impaired. The rationale for use of WISC-III Verbal short forms is to provide a time saving and technically sound measure for the screening and/or periodical re-evaluation of children with visual impairments who may require special education services. The total sample consisted of the WISC-III test scores of 78 children identified with the handicapping condition of either partial sightedness or legal blindness, who had been given the regularly administered Verbal subtests. The mean age level of the total sample was 11 years, 4 months. Three additional groups were obtained from the test records of the original data which included, children identified as either partially sighted or legally blind (n=62) who were given the regularly administered Verbal subtests and supplementary Digit Span subtest (referred to as the Digit Span group), and children identified as partially sighted (n=47), and legally blind (n=31), who were given only the regularly administered Verbal subtests. Ninety-seven percent of the data were obtained from existing test records, and the remaining data from the actual administration of the WISC-III Verbal subtests for the purpose of collecting data for the study. Children identified with the handicapping conditions of multiple disabilities or mental retardation were not included in the sample. For the total sample and additional groups, the mean Verbal IQ score and mean scaled score of the individual subtests fell in the average range. The WISC-III Verbal short form combinations were identified by utilizing the formulas of Tellegen and Briggs (1967) for determining the reliability and validity coefficients of short form combinations. High reliability and validity coefficients were obtained for all two-, three-, and four-subtest combinations of the total sample and additional groups. The study results suggest WISC-III Verbal short forms offer a time efficient and technically sound measure to be utilized in assessment of the verbal intellectual development of school-age children with visual impairments.