Week 7+8: Reading and Analyzing

Hello! I have finally finished recording and charting all the data for this project and sadly, I did not get to 200 data points. I ended up with 100 data points, but among those, I have decided to only use the data points that used the WISC-IV as the measure of general intellectual functioning. The majority of Small Brooklyn’s patients are children between the ages of 5 and 16, which fits with the age range of the WISC. But, sometimes they have adults or children under the age of 5 come in for neuropsych evaluations, and they would require the WAIS-IV (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) or the WPPSI-IV (Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence) respectively. The RIAS (Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales) that tests general intellectual functioning for the same skills that the Wechsler scales do, but in a shorter way with different individual activities. 

Even though I ended up with 100 total data points, for the sake of this project, I am choosing to eliminate all data points that do not explicitly look at the WISC. While the WAIS is said to be comparable in test style, the people taking the WAIS could range from a 16 year old teenager to a 50 year old adult, and I felt there are a lot of additional factors that come with age that may impact one’s intellectual functioning (such as memory loss) that allowed me to feel justified in removing these data points. The WPPSI and RIAS in itself are completely different examinations, so I would no longer have a standardized form of assessment for measuring IQ. I eliminate this issue by limiting my data to only observing the WISC. 

I have also begun to look at two textbooks: “Neuropsychological Evaluation of the Child” and the “Handbook of Psychological Assessment”, specifically the chapters that focus on the history, reliability, limitations and meaning of the WISC scores. I have to keep reminding myself that these texts are both outdated (for reference, in 2022, we are currently using the WISC-V), using studies that refer to the WISC-III, in order to ADDRESS the WISC-IV. I think the information itself is certainly still plausible, there just may be newer studies that have access to a larger database that could be more accurate than the information presented in these textbooks. 

I have a lot of work to do regarding the statistics of this project. I have to figure out how to categorize socio-economic status, figure out how to graph the information, figure out which statistical model would be best for my purposes and extract any correlations from that. I’ll see where that goes next week.

Katie