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What Does the Digital Administration Format of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V) Measure?

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Abstract

Despite the fact that the digital administration format of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V) was published in 2016, no research to date has examined its factor structure using all 10 of the primary subtests to measure intellectual ability. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to use exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to examine the internal structure of the digital administration format of the WISC-V. Results of this study indicated that the theoretical and scoring structure of the WISC-V fit the data well. In addition, consistent with prior research on the standard administration format of the WISC-V, results revealed that the digital administration format is an excellent measure of general cognitive ability or psychometric g. The general factor accounted for approximately 77% of the common factor variance on the WISC-V. The first-order factors, which reflect the composite scores, however, had insufficient unique, reliable variance to warrant clinical interpretation. Results of our study suggest that the structure of the digital administration format of the WISC-V is similar to the standard format and that both are excellent measures of psychometric g, but little else. Implications of these results for practice are discussed.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

  1. The technical report by Daniel et al. (2014) was later published by Daniel and Wahlstrom (2019).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA

    Kacey Gilbert

  2. Department of Educational Psychology, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

    Nicholas F. Benson

  3. School of Special Education, School Psychology, and Early Childhood Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    John H. Kranzler

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  1. Kacey Gilbert
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Correspondence to Kacey Gilbert.

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Gilbert, K., Benson, N.F. & Kranzler, J.H. What Does the Digital Administration Format of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V) Measure?. Contemp School Psychol 27, 623–633 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-022-00447-z

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