Buro center has been used for over 70 years solely dedicated for the work of improving sciences with the sole reason of testing and the publication of the mental measurement yearbooks and test in prints and in multiple languages including English and Spanish. This help avail information to the users seeking them. The site also publishes single volumes and avail copies through availed links and offer option of sending questions as well as any material individuals would love to be included in the next editions. Adaptive behavior is widely applied in the evaluation of people with development and intellectual disabilities. ABAS assess the adaptive behavior on individuals by measuring the daily living skills that includes the individual’s capability with or without help of others. It makes it useful in evaluating individuals with developmental as well as mental disorders and retardations.
The primary purpose for instance, is the assessment of Personal intellectual ability; the review draws a personal intellectual ability test for the children, adolescents and adults. The review includes but not limited to evaluation of over twenty features of human figure drawing procedures due to instructions and drawing of pictures individually. The examined students are asked to draw full figure of their specimen’s features individually and scores awarded individually ranging from 0-4 points on each part of the specimen draw. The raw scores are then converted to single standard scores with the mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15 ranges considered between a-z scores. This therefore gives the examiners the percentage quartiles that are thus ranked based on age equivalence and grade equivalence.
The tests thus provide better measures of the ability of using human figure drawing as an estimate to cognitive ability. The focus of the measures in the past have been focused on the children and authors have changed the norm to help focus on the adults as well thereby extending the application. The authors have also hoped to develop sing set of criterion in be used across all the ages and both genders while producing an established norm by reducing the effect of the motor acquired skills on the scoring of the figure drawing skills.
The primary target population are individuals or to a group of students ranging between 4-89 years of age. The test is then administered between eight to fifteen minutes to identify the test scores. During the test, students are required to use pencils and erasers with the drawing form as the instructors use the administration form to record the score while the students draw each feature. The authors recommend the training of the examinees during the assessment to enable them have the required knowledge on the current theories and the developments that relates to their study line. They are also provided with the examiners manual that is very open and straight forward thus providing them with the technical information including the scoring examples and normative data. The tests therefore give a comprehensive evaluation of the students’ ability and offer a lower estimate bound that supplements other intelligence tests.
The project is applied across different cultures with the recent census data showing over 2.3 million people in the U.S already adopting the study technique. The census also showed geographical coverage in addition to the age and gender as well as the races in the United States including those of Hispanic origin. The disparity is also based on the family income and education attainment of the parents as well as the disability status of the individuals involved. The sample carried out was solely done by the volunteer examiners for the publishing house who used customer files and additional sites throughout the country while mainly focusing on Texas. It included other dimensions but the major ones used were the age factor focusing on the age groups that ranges 15 years in a group.
ABAS reliability would be defined as in the context in which the test scores are considered to be consistent and repeated over again in the administration of the same instruments. The ABAS are reliable as they yield constant and consistent table of scores over time as the respondents’ rate the same person’s adaptive behavior in different items with no change in an individual’s adaptive behavior skills. The test yield consistent scores from one interviewer reflected by multiple interviewees showing an inter-respondent reliability. The individuals who provided the information used for completing the ABAS knew the individuals very well in addition to having the opportunity to observe the individual very well as they take their daily today tasks on a weekly basis in different settings thereby giving a reliable and valid information through the direct observation methods used.
The exercise had biased in measuring the assessment of the intellectual functioning with a large normative base which is quicker to administer as well as the ease in scoring among the candidates. Despite the sample size being mainly focused on Texas, there are other samples that have been conducted and examined with more sophisticated equipment and methods, thereby providing a more reliable and valid reports that meet the required standards. Therefore more studies to the age groups and with other well validated age group tests that have been done may be confidently used for the adolescent and adults to gauge their intellectual functioning as well as their cognitive ability. The study has thus been developed using modern techniques required especially in the areas where language is an issue. This therefore makes it more reliable in providing valid information relevant for the tests.
References
Jonathan, Sandoval (2004). Review of the Draw -A -personal Intellectual Ability Test for Children, Adolescents, and Adults University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA:
