Four-subtest short-form of the WAIS-IV for assessment of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia

Abstract

Introduction

The present study aimed to obtain a short form of the Spanish version of the WAIS-IV for patients diagnosed with schizophrenia that requires about half an hour to be administered. The reduced test can be very useful in clinical and research settings when an estimation of the intelligence quotient (IQ) is required to decide about intervention programs or to describe the sample.

Materials and methods

A sample of 143 patients participated in the study, 91 out of them were the test group, and the other 52 were used for a cross-validation analysis. To increase the content validity, the decision was made to create a short form composed of a subtest of each of the four cognitive domains that the scale measures.

Results

Several analyses showed that the best combination was composed of the Information, Block Design, Arithmetic, and Symbol Search subtests. Nine different criteria were calculated to evaluate the quality of the short form.

Conclusions

The data showed very good results for the criteria: correlations, difference of means, and cross-validation. The results were satisfactory for: category agreement, band of error, clinical accuracy, and reliability.