Validation of a WISC-III Short-Form for the Identification of Canadian Gifted Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of scores obtained from the Dumont/Faro short-form in identifying children who score in the gifted range on the complete administration of the WISC-III. The findings showed that of the 29 children identified as gifted based on their WISC-III Full Scale scores, 20 children were correctly identified as gifted, and the 9 others were identified as potentially gifted, when the short-form was employed. Moreover, only 5 of the 129 children who were identified as not gifted according to their full Scale scores were misidentified as gifted according to the short-form. In general these results suggest that, because of the brief nature of the short-form, use of this form in place of the complete WISC-III administration could reduce, by nearly half, the amount of time normally devoted to screening for giftedness. Step-by-step recommendations for employing the short-form are provided