Is it appropriate to use United States norms to assess the “intelligence” of Australian children?

Abstract

The present study investigates whether it is appropriate to use United States (U.S.) normed childhood intelligence tests in Australia in the context of rising IQ in both countries. Australian mean or median performance was analysed against U.S. norms for the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children — Third Edition (WISC-III), the Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale — Fourth Edition (SB-IV), the Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) and Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM). Comparisons were adjusted for the “Flynn effect” to equate the U.S. and Australian normative studies for date of standardisation. The analysis revealed that Australian children under the age of 15 may obtain somewhat higher IQ scores than comparably aged U.S. children. Furthermore, findings indicated that the use of U.S. norms for testing Australian children with the WISC-III and SB-IV may result in the misclassification of a number of Australian children soon after the publication of these tests; the use of the WISC-III and SB-IV U.S. norms in Australia in the year 2002 may result in the misclassification of a large number of Australian children. Implications of the current findings for Australian psychologists are discussed.