Methodological issues in the clinical evaluation of two- and four-subtest short forms of the WAIS-R

The evaluation of two- and four-subtest short forms of the WAIS-R has proceeded with little empirical attention to the effects of shortened administration time upon test performance. Routinely, the full WAIS-R has been administered and short form estimates extracted from the complete set of test results. Time and motivational/attentional factors can be evaluated by the administration of short form subtests first, followed by the remaining subtests in standard order or, alternatively, by the test-retest paradigm with short and complete WAIS-R versions. Limitations of these methodologies and existing empirical results are discussed.