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The WISC‐R and evidence of item bias for native‐American Navajos
Author(s) -
Mishra Shitala P.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6807(198210)19:4<458::aid-pits2310190408>3.0.co;2-e
Subject(s) - navajo , psychology , vocabulary , wechsler adult intelligence scale , statistic , wechsler intelligence scale for children , developmental psychology , homogeneous , test (biology) , statistics , cognition , linguistics , paleontology , philosophy , mathematics , physics , neuroscience , biology , thermodynamics
The study investigated cultural bias in the 79 items of the three verbal tests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children‐Revised (WISC‐R). The Information, Similarities, and Vocabulary subtests were administered to 40 Anglo and 40 Native‐ American Navajo subjects matched for grade level. The responses of the two groups of subjects on individual items were analyzed by log‐linear technique using the likelihood ratio chi‐square statistic. The findings revealed that performance of subjects was homogeneous across groups on most of the items of three verbal subtests of the WISC‐R. Only 15 (19%) of the 79 items comprising Information, Similarities, and Vocabulary subtests were found to be biased against the Navajo sample. Five of these items are from the Information, four from the Similarities, and the remaining six items are from the Vocabulary subtest. Implications of these findings for the psychoeducational assessment of minority children were discussed.