PSYCHOMETRIC EFFECTS OF ALTERING THE CEILING CRITERION ON THE PASSAGECOMPREHENSION TEST OF THE WOODCOCK-JOHNSON PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL BATTERY-REVISED

The Passage Comprehension Test of the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educatio nal Battery-Revised (WJ-R) was administered to 77 elementary and middl e school students and was scored according to ceiling criteria contain ed in the test mutual (i.e., six consecutive errors). The protocols we re then rescored using the following ceiling criteria: (a) five consec utive errors, (b) five errors in six consecutive responses, and (c) fi ve errors in seven consecutive responses. There was a strong relations hip between raw scores obtained using all four scoring methods, and th ere were consistent correlations between each group of raw scores and an external measure, full-scale intelligence quotient. The investigato rs found that relaxing the ceiling criterion reduced, to a statistical ly significant degree, the number of administered items needed to esta blish a ceiling without negatively affecting the psychometric properti es of the test. Regression equations were presented so that raw scores obtained using the alternate scoring methods could be used to access the WJ-R norm tables. Practical implications and limitations of the re sults were discussed.