A preliminary adaption of the wechsler adult intelligence scale revised vocabulary subtest for use in Turkey: Volume two the adaption study (Methodology and results)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to prepare a preliminaryadaptation of the Vocabulary subtest of the Wechsler AdultIntelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R). The WAIS-R is a scalethat is widely used in the United States and in Turkey inorder to measure the intelligence quotients of indiVidualsover sixteen years of age.This study was conducted in three successive phases.First, the intelligence tests that are used in the worldwere studied. The processes were examined which are appliedto tests of foreign origin before their being used inTurkey. After a research of cross-cultural standardizationtechniques,the adaptation of the WAIS-R Vocabulary subtestwas initiated.The adaptation was accomplished in two stages. First,several publications were scanned to form a preliminarylist of 100 words. This list was tried with 60 people andthe number of words was reduced to half. In the last stage,the test with the new list was conducted with a sample of600,and the list was finalized after several statisticalanalyses. The subjects 'participating in the study consistedof equal numbers of men and women who were randomly selectedfrom five socio-economic-status levels.The final list formed after the statistical analysesdoes not present significant differences between sex andage groups and the differences due to socio-economic',status ,have been minimized. A study of validity and theestablishment of standard scores is necessary before thetest can be applicable for the Turkish population at large.