Through the Past Darkly: A Review of the British Ability Scales Second Edition

This article provides a review of the British Ability Scales, Second Edition (BAS II) for applied psychologists; it aims to describe the special features of the scale, highlighting implications for practice, as well as describing the developments in psychometry this scale represents in comparison with other widely used tests. Although the BAS has been in use since 1979 and represents a more contemporary psychometric model of human ability, with British norms, it is not as widely used in British research or applied psychological assessment as might be anticipated; traditional allegiances to the older, more established, Anglicised standardisation of the American Wechsler scales appear to persist.