The Wide Range Achievement Test: A validation study
Abstract
A major goal of the American educational system is to assist students in developing a command of knowledge needed to function in society. Achievement tests are concerned with the measurement of outcomes of the academic process. The need to establish effective methods for measuring and predicting academic success among students has been of longstanding interest to researchers, educators and psychologists. A large variety of standardized achievement measures exist from which to choose, among them, the Wide Range Achievement Test - Revised, (WRAT-R), developed by Jastak and Wilkinson in 1984. Despite its popularity, questions concerning the validity of this measure have been raised. Research efforts have examined the degree to which the WRAT-R correlates with intellectual capacity or to other standardized measures of achievement. There is a paucity of research which attempts to explore the relationship between the WRAT-R measures and school based academic performance. The current research project attempted to address questions concerning the relationship between academic grades and WRAT-R achievement test score results. Data collected from the files of 85 students who had attended a small, private elementary school between the years of 1987 and 1993 were analyzed. Analyses indicate that the Wide Range Achievement Test - Revised results significantly correlate with academic subject grades in reading, arithmetic and spelling. Regression analyses further indicate that WRAT-R scores in reading, arithmetic and spelling predicted academic grades in reading, arithmetic and spelling. The results lend support for the use of the WRAT-R as a measure of achievement for specific academic subject areas, as well as its potential to predict achievement in specific academic subjects. Results do not support its use as a measure of general achievement.
Subject Area
Educational psychology|Educational evaluation
Recommended Citation
Masotti, Janet, "The Wide Range Achievement Test: A validation study" (1997). ETD Collection for Pace University. AAI9724156.
https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/dissertations/AAI9724156
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