Interpretation and Misinterpretation of the South African Wechsler-Bellevue Adult Intelligence Scale: A History and a Prospectus

Abstract

The South African Wechsler is based on the 1939 Wechsler-Bellevue Adult Intelligence Scale. However, the name under which it was published by the National Institute of Personnel Research in 1969, the ‘South African Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale’, has led a generation of South African psychologists to believe that this instrument is a local verson of the 1955 WAIS, a fundamentally revised and renormed Wechsler-Bellevue. It is argued that the continued use of the South African Wechsler-Bellevue, with its outdated norms and unknown statistical properties, is not in the public interest, and that diagnostic conclusions based on this instrument may be misleading. It is then argued that if a new adult intelligence scale is to be developed, this should be based on the 1981 revision of the Wechsler (WAIS-R), rather than the local scale now under development by the Human Sciences Research Council; and finally, that in psychology, South Africa is not a beggar at the world's door, and that the capability exists for the development of an innovative and culturally appropriate ability assessment device. One such possibility is described.