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Published on: February 14, 2014
Which Score for What? Operationalizing Standardized Cognitive Test Performance for the Assessment of Change
Cristan Farmer1, Audrey Thurm1, Tanvi Das1
1Cristan Farmer, Audrey Thurm, and Tanvi Das, National Institute of Mental Health; E. Martina Bebin, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Jonathan A. Bernstein, Stanford University School of Medicine; Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, Rush University Medical Center; Joseph D. Buxbaum, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Charis Eng, Cleveland Clinic; Thomas Frazier, John Carroll University, SUNY Upstate Medical University; Antonio Y. Hardan, Stanford University; Alexander Kolevzon, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Darcy A. Krueger, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center; Julian A. Martinez-Agosto, University of California at Los Angeles; Hope Northrup, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Children's Memorial Hospital; Craig M. Powell, University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine and Civitan International Research Center; Latha Valluripalli Soorya, Rush University Medical Center; Joyce Y. Wu, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine; and Mustafa Sahin, Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
Abstract:
Developmental domains, such as cognitive, language, and motor, are key concepts of interest in longitudinal studies of intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Normative scores (e.g., IQ) are often used to operationalize performance on standardized tests of these concepts, but it is the interval-distributed person-ability scores that are intended for the assessment of within-individual change. Here we illustrate the use and interpretation of several Stanford Binet, 5th Edition score types (IQ, extended IQ, Z-normalized raw score, developmental quotient, raw sum score, age equivalent, and ability score) using data from two longitudinal studies of rare genetic conditions associated with IDD. We found that, although normality assumptions were tenuous for all score types, floor effects led to model unsuitability for longitudinal analysis of most types of norm-referenced scores, and that the validity of interpretation with respect to individual change was best for ability scores.
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