Essentials of WAIS-III Assessment (Essentials of Psychological Assessment Series) (Paperback)

by Alan S. Kaufman (Author), Elizabeth O. Lichtenberger (Author) "The field of assessment, particularly intellectual assessment, has grown tremendously over the past couple decades..." (more)
Key Phrases: discontinue criterion, abnormal scatter, complex verbal stimuli, Object Assembly, Perceptual Organization Index, Digit Span (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A tremendous amount of information packed into this little book. It more than delivers what it promises." (Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, January 2003)

Product Description
Complete coverage of administration, scoring, interpretation, and reporting.

Expert advice on avoiding common pitfall.s.

Conveniently formatted for rapid reference.

Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently administer, score, and interpret the WAIS-III.

The latest version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, WAIS-III, which includes several significant modifications and structural changes, three new subsets, and a variety of optional procedures, is a more sophisticated and complex instrument than its predecessors. Professionals who wish to use it properly need an authoritative source of advice and guidance on how to properly administer, score, and interpret the updated test. Coauthored by Alan S. Kaufman, who worked closely with David Wechsler on the WISC-R, Essentials of WAIS-III Assessment is that source.

Like all the volumes in the new Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, this book is designed to help busy mental health practitioners quickly acquire the knowledge and skills they need to make optimal use of a major psychological assessment instrument. Each concise chapter features numerous callout boxes highlighting key concepts, bulleted points, and extensive illustrative material, as well as test questions that help you to gauge and reinforce your grasp of the information covered.

The initial chapters of Essentials of WAIS-III Assessment provide step-by-step guidance on test administration, scoring, and interpretation. In the chapters following, the authors provide their expert assessment of the test's relative strengths and weaknesses, valuable advice on its clinical applications, exciting new research data on aging and IQ, and several illuminating case reports.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471282952
• ISBN-13: 978-0471282952
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #65,522 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #45 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > By Topic > Intelligence
  #73 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > Testing & Measurement

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear and user-friendly yet sophisticated, September 19, 2001

By	marared (Southern California) - See all my reviews

This is a gem of a book. I assigned it for the grad students in my intellectual assessment course and both they and I found it to be very helpful and easy to use. The format of the book makes it very user-friendly and unintimidating. There are a lot of boxes and highlighted text that help the reader to find what he or she is looking for quickly. This book covers administration, scoring, and interpretation and provides numerous helpful tips for beginners on common errors. The approach to interpretation provided in this book is a pared-down and slightly modified version of the method described in Kaufman's book Intelligent Testing with the WISC-III (an excellent book with a great deal of information on interpreting the WISC-III). Kaufman and Lichtenberger take the guess work and estimation out of interpreting the significance of various scores. This approach is based in the scientific method (assume nonsignificance unless you have a compelling reason, based on the test data, to believe that the variations in scores on the test protocol are unlikely to have resulted by chance). This approach is very helpful in giving students an understanding of how much variation in test scores can result from test error, and brings the "science" back into test interpretation. There are a lot of numbers to crunch using this method, and in some ways the clarity of the system can encourage users to become mechanistic, but I feel that the emphasis on systematic and defensible interpretation is well worth this risk. Kaufman's approach has become the basis of the standard described in the WAIS manual and calculated on the WAIS-III record form, and this book is an excellent way to learn it and the rationale behind it. The book is also an excellent reference for practitioners. I find myself pulling it off my shelf very frequently as I supervise student assessments, and it's loaned out to various students a lot of the time. The book provides pages of useful tables, some of which are in the WAIS-III manual, but many of which are not. One caution is that the shared abilities tables provided here are based on theory rather than data, so it's important to take these with a grain of salt. Also there are a couple of points in the "decision tree" where it's not entirely clear in some situations what the reader is to do. This is not a common problem, but one that is not really adequately addressed in my opinion.
Overall a truly excellent book that raises the standard for WAIS-III interpretation above that seen in many practitioners. This is a treasure chest of information at a great price.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have!, March 31, 2000

By	Heather O'Shea (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

I am a graduate student in psychology and this is the clearest text I have ever read that describes the interpretive process of IQ tests! Look for their new book for WISC interpretation as well!

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars makes assessment easy, March 9, 1999

By A Customer

I really enjoyed this book -- it was easy to read and well-written, and made the topic matter (which normally is quite hard) understandable.