Seriously Emotionally Disturbed Children's Performance on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children: A Concurrent Validity Study

Abstract

This study focused on the concurrent validity of two measures of intelligence, the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), with a sample of 59 seriously emotionally disturbed children. Moreover, since the K-ABC does not stress language skills, the children were given the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery which was used in combination with the cognitive scales of the K-ABC to study relationships with the WISC-R. Intercorrelations, means, and standard deviations of the K-ABC and WISC-R were computed. The validity evidence collected suggested that the K-ABC has a significant, positive relationship with the WISC-R for seriously emotionally disturbed children. The results of the regression analyses indicated that the relationship between the K-ABC Mental Processing Composite and the WISC-R Full Scale IQ was statistically significant; however, the addition of the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery did not account for an appreciable increase in variance explaining the WISC-R Full Scale IQ.