Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education, Counseling

Date of Defense

6-15-2018

Graduate Advisor

Mark Pope, Ed.D.

Committee

Susan A. Kashubeck-West, Ph.D.

M. Lee Nelson, Ph.D.

Jan Munro, Ed.D.

Abstract

Identifying gifted students early is important so they may receive adaptations in their learning environment including admittance into gifted programs (Subotnik, Olszweski-Kubilius, & Worrell, 2012). An effective method to increase the likelihood of identifying gifted students is needed (Pfeiffer, 2003). Admission at the elementary level primarily uses the individually-administered intelligence test; yet, the test is only administered to students nominated to the gifted program. The purpose of this study was to determine if individually-administered IQ test scores were related to specific information available to the elementary school counselor to aid in the determination of unidentified gifted elementary school students who would benefit from participating in the school district’s gifted program. This study examined whether an individually-administered IQ score on the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) was accurately estimated by a function of the national percentile achievement test scores in total reading, total mathematics, language, spelling, science/environment, and listening, verbal and nonverbal cognitive abilities, gender, or grade. The data were split into two equal samples of 107, one used for development of the regression model and one for validation of the regression model. A significant model emerged for the model sample (n=107) explaining 46.3% of the variance, when all 10 independent variables were entered as predictors into a simultaneous multiple regression. Total mathematics, science/environment, listening, nonverbal cognitive ability, and grade were the significant predictors. The revised regression equation with only the five significant contributing independent variables explained 45.9% of the variance in the WASI score; yet, it only had a correlation of .27 between the actual WASI score and the estimated WASI score from the revised model using the validation sample and has a weak correlation of 7.3% of the variance explained. Future research is needed to investigate these findings before the model is used in practice. Research on identifying gifted students; characteristics of giftedness; implications for counselors in the areas of counseling, school, and career development; and the role of the school counselor in advocacy and action research were discussed.

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