Thursday, June 11, 2009

Art and Science of Test Development: Encyclopedia of Gv (visual-spatial) tests



Yesterday I blogged about my "Art and Science of Test Development" project.  Today I continue with another tidbit.

When trying to develop new tests to measure cognitive abilities, a test developer often looks at existing tests (whats been done before).  Many years ago I was given a Xeroxed copy of the large and out-of-print  International Directory of Spatial Tests", which is a godsend if you are thinking of developing a new measure in the domain of Gv (visual processing).  It includes images and brief descriptions of over 390 different visual-spatial tests grouped into 13 categories.  We (authors of the WJ III) used it to decide on what new Gv test we might add to the WJ III.  We ended up with WJ III Block Rotation test (in the WJ III Diagnostic Supplement).  Although dated, and thus not inclusive of Gv test innovations since 1983, it is tremndous resource.

If you are not looking to develop new Gv tests, reviewing at all the various tests (and permutations of common formats) is very interesting and you can often see the historical roots of individual tests in many contemporary intelligence batteries.

While searching the net yesterday I discovered that this publication is now available via download as a PDF file.  You can find it at the link above.  Be forwarned...it is a huge file (35 MB)...don't download from wifi connection is my advice.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kevin, could you make available here the pdf of your as-of-today-in-press paper in Intelligence (on the dependability of general factor scores). Thanks a lot.

Kevin McGrew said...

I need to check with the first author first. If he is ok with it I will