Using WRIT as the assessment of General Ability

Many users of the Portfolio assess children using the Wide Range Intelligence Test (Glutting et al, PAR, 2000).

The WRIT yields two separate scores and one composite score: Visual and Verbal Intelligence scores, which together produce the General IQ score.

The sub-tests that make up the Visual score are Matrices and Diamonds. These measure visual abilities, demanding the individual to visualise relationships between elements: perceiving the similarity between complex visual patterns (Matrices) and part-whole relationships (Diamonds).

The sub-tests that make up the Verbal score are Verbal Analogies and Vocabulary. The former calls on skills of verbal abstraction and generalisation of meaning, while the latter depends on an individual’s understanding and production of oral language.

All tests are given orally.

An average of the Visual and Verbal Intelligence scores provides the General Ability score.

However, WRIT comes with an important health warning:

Caution should (also) be exercised when unusual differences are present between the Visual and Verbal IQs. The differences may render the General IQ scores of dubious clinical utility. For example, if a participant’s Visual and Verbal IQs are 52 and 110 respectively using the General IQ of 80, and suggesting that the participant is functioning overall in the low average range, is technically accurate, but such an interpretation could miss emphasising important cognitive strengths and weakness.
(WRIT Manual p 11)

Further detailed guidance is given in Chapter 6 of the WRIT manual about the significance and prevalence of discrepancies between scores on the Visual and Verbal tests.

Without a detailed knowledge of WRIT and how UK children will perform on it, GL Assessment recommends that if an individual’s WRIT scores are significantly discrepant neither the GI Score, nor the Visual or Verbal Score should be included in the Portfolio Report Generation Tool.

GL Assessment is sponsoring research into the use of WRIT (and other ability assessments) with the Portfolio and further information will appear on the website in mid-autumn.