Age-corrected norms for Shipley Institute of Living Scale scores derived from psychiatric inpatients

Age has been identified as a particularly powerful factor that affects neuropsychological test scores. The Shipley Institute of Living Scale especially requires age-corrected norms because the Abstraction subtest has been shown to decline with advancing age. This study attempts to improve upon the methodology employed in a previous study by the same authors (Tamkin & Jacobsen, 1986) by correcting only the Abstraction score, increasing the number of subjects to 486, and increasing the number of age groupings to 11. An empirically derived correction for each age group is added to the Abstraction score, and the total Shipley score then is entered in Table 5 of Paulson and Lin (1970) to determine the corresponding WAIS IQ. These norms are ecologically valid for adult, male inpatients with various psychiatric diagnoses, a population for whom the Shipley frequently is used.