Contemporary psychology, Vol. 7 No. 1, 2004.
Original scientific paper
Reliability and validity of the Slovene version of WISC-III SI
Valentin Bucik
Abstract
WISC is one of the best-known and most frequently used intelligence tests for children. The new, third version was issued in USA ten years ago and since then at least 14 different language versions of the test can be found in different cultures. When translating the intelligence test from one language and/or cultural milieu to another, it is essential that the process of translation and adaptation considers the same methodological design as it was used in building the original version. In addition, all requirements about comparability of the original and adapted version in the theoretical structure and difficulty or discriminability of particular items as well as subscales and scales are to be met. The adapted instrument must also be equivalent to the original version regarding reliability and construct validity. In Slovenia the adaptation project of WISC-III SI started in 1998 and lasted almost five years. The validation study was carried out on the representative sample of 1080 children of 6 to 17 years of age. Some modifications of particular items were necessary in order to reach better intelligibility. Because of some differences in the difficulty the order of certain items in subtests needed to be changed and some items had to be replaced with alternative ones. The reliability analysis of WISC-III SI showed extremely high congruence of internal consistency coefficients in Slovene validation sample with the ones in the US and British standardization samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses pointed out appropriateness of the classification of subtest into Verbal and Performance scales, but they also supported the new possible interpretation of WISC-III results, the expression of testee's achievement in four factor-based scales: Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Organization, Freedom of Distractibility and Processing Speed. Different factor-analytic approaches, cross-validation and comparative validation analyses in different language versions of WISC-III demonstrated that the structure of the test across subscales and scales is very stable and that the standardized scores obtained in WISC-III in different languages and cultures are highly comparable.
Keywords
WISC - III; verbal Comprehension; perceptual organization; freedom of distractibility; processing Speed
Hrčak ID:
3239
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2004.
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