Indonesian WAIS-IV Cultural Research

This study examined regional differences between Indonesians on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV Indonesia (WAIS-IV ID) and, in comparison, to the US. Three hypotheses were examined: a) Java will demonstrate stronger WAIS-IV ID performances than non-Java (NJ) samples. b) WAIS-IV ID performances will be correlated with educational attainment. c) Indonesians with higher levels of education will perform comparably to US samples.

The WAIS-IV was translated into Bahasa Indonesia and administered to a convenience sample representative of the Indonesian population breakdown by island. Comparisons between Java and NJ samples were analyzed by analyses of covariance controlling for education attainment. Comparisons between the Indonesian and US samples were analyzed by one sample t-tests.

The Java sample performed significantly higher than the NJ sample. Performances for the Java but not the NJ sample significantly correlated with educational attainment. Indonesians performed significantly lower than the US on 19/20 WAIS-IV ID subtests measures. However, the Java sample demonstrated comparable performances with the US with both countries scoring significantly higher than the other on select subtests and indexes. The Java sample demonstrated lower performances for older age cohorts with increasingly stronger scores across younger age cohorts. This pattern was paralleled by increases in educational attainment.

All hypotheses were supported except for correlations between educational attainment and WAIS-IV ID performances which was significant for the Java sample but not the NJ sample. Findings were interpreted within the context of economics and educational attainment and quality.