Validity of Factor-Based WAIS-III Short Forms for Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

• Main Authors: Yi-Yi Tsai, 蔡怡怡
• Other Authors: 花茂棽
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/53324361969481936328

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 100 === Background: The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III (WAIS-III) is one of the most commonly used measures, but its administration time for the full battery is long due to various practical constrains (such as limited time or individual’s fatigue and inattention). Therefore, a short form of the WAIS-III could be used to shorten the administration time when only a brief intelligence screening is required. Currently, there are five available tetrads suitable for normal individuals in Taiwan. However, the issue of whether these tetrads can be fully generalized to patient populations remains unclear. Objective: To assess the appropriateness of factor-based short forms of the WAIS-III for Taiwanese outpatients with traumatic brain injury and temporal lobe epilepsy. Methods: The present study was retrospective in nature. The sample consisted of 132 individuals from the outpatient clinic at the National Taiwan University Hospital from 2005 to 2011. Two patient groups, 81 individuals with a history of TBI and 51 with TLE, were recruited. Various psychometric procedures, time constrains, and qualities of estimation among prorating and linear equating procedures, were compared among all possible factor-based short form combinations for patients with traumatic brain injury and temporal lobe epilepsy. We examined the applicability of five available tetrads for normal Taiwanese to both patient groups, and then further investigated psychometric qualities of the remaining 31 tetrads. Results: More than half of the estimates based on both estimation procedures for patient groups showed inflated variances, although they had available estimation accuracy. Results of both estimation procedures were about the same; thus, we considered both estimated procedures simultaneously in our study. Five tetrads appropriate for normal individuals were not feasible for use with our patient groups. With regard to application to clinical patient groups, the Information-Block Design-Arithmetic-Symbol Search form was recommended for the traumatic brain injury patient group, and the Vocabulary-Matrix Reasoning-Arithmetic-Digit Symbol Substitution form and the Similarities-Block Design-Digit Span- Symbol Search form for the temporal lobe epilepsy patient group, due to their good psychometric properties. Conclusion: Results of this study helps clinical practitioners choose feasible factor-based tetrads for both patient groups by providing their relative psychometric quality. Users are cautioned to use these short forms only for screening purpose because even preferred tetrads had substantial misclassification, and medical information of our patients was not completely collected due to retrospective study.