Remote Assessment: Origins, Benefits, and Concerns

Although guidelines surrounding COVID-19 have relaxed and school-aged students are no longer required to wear masks and social distance in schools, we have become, as a nation and as a society, more comfortable working from home, learning online, and using technology as a platform to communicate ubiquitously across ecological environments. In the school psychology community, we have also become more familiar with assessing students virtually, but at what cost? While there is research suggesting score equivalency between virtual and in-person assessment, score equivalency alone is not sufficient to validate a measure or an adaptation thereof. Furthermore, the majority of psychological measures on the market are normed for in-person administration. In this paper, we will not only review the pitfalls of reliability and validity but will also unpack the ethics of remote assessment as an equitable practice.

Long-term stability of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-fifth edition scores in a clinical sample

This study investigated the stability of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V) scores for 225 children and adolescents from an outpatient neuropsychological clinic across, on average, a 2.6 year test-retest interval. WISC-V mean scores were relatively constant but subtest stability score coefficients were all below 0.80 (M = 0.66) and only the Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI), Visual Spatial Index (VSI), and omnibus Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) stability coefficients exceeded 0.80. Neither intraindividual subtest difference scores nor intraindividual composite difference scores were stable across time (M = 0.26 and 0.36, respectively). Rare and unusual subtest and composite score differences as well as subtest and index scatter at initial testing were unlikely to be repeated at retest (kappa = 0.03 to 0.49). It was concluded that VCI, VSI, and FSIQ scores might be sufficiently stable to support normative comparisons but that none of the intraindividual (i.e. idiographic, ipsative, or person-relative) measures were stable enough for confident clinical decision making.