Question About Testing

[La Condessa]

I've read on here before when people are talking about testing, some have mentioned that they had testing done at a university for a lot less. How does one find out about opportunities for that? Whom do I speak to?

[Arcadia]

Dept of psychology of the university would have students who need "guinea pigs" to practice on. A friend had her daughter's IQ test and MRI done for free under one of Stanford's research project but you have to be comfortable with a MRI every year for a few years. Offhand, I remembered Quark went through the testing at university so she can explain more. We went private because my DS11 is really wriggly and dramatic and my husband wasn't comfortable with a postgrad student doing the testing even if supervised.

Unofficially we were told by many to wait until 8 years old for better testing results. My DS11 would not have been matured enough anyway before 8.

 

ETA:

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/why_test.htm

"Research shows that for the average child, IQ test scores are reliable around age 8. Observations of gifted children (real research is needed) indicate that reliability in IQ scores is obtained much younger in the gifted population."

Edited April 5, 2017 by Arcadia

[quark]

A friend of mine clued me in to the test at a university. As Arcadia says, the psychology department was running a study on autistic children and were looking for male control participants in the 7-12yo range. They were offering a full WISC4 as part of the testing as well as a chance to have an MRI. My son was very intrigued by the brain at the time (just turned 8) and I was very stumped about how to keep challenging him without knowing ballpark potential, and so we signed up. Once we were there, they told us about the department website and other studies they were conducting for which we could sign up for the mailing list.

 

Advantages:

• Almost free. We were reimbursed for part of the cost of gas and parking (we had to drive 2 hours one way to get there).
• My son loved the testing.
• I received a report of scaled scores and tester was willing to provide raw scores too.

Disadvantage:

• It took about 7-8 hours a day for 2 days (travel time + looking for parking + testing + filling in loads of questionnaires). We had time at the time so it was ok.
• No interpretation of scores. Kid hit ceilings on many of the subtests so although I knew it probably meant high IQ, no one broke it down for me so I had to research a lot of it myself.
• Discrepancy -- there was one area where the test really did not capture potential, which leaves me scratching my head still (although now the numbers don't really matter anymore :laugh: )

Hope that helps!

[La Condessa]

Thank you very much.

[slackermom]

We got testing done through one of the research offices of a teaching hospital. The teaching hospital is affiliated with a well-known medical school. So, if you are near a teaching hospital, check out their psychiatry department's webpage and look for research opportunities.

 

In our case, the researchers were trying to find ways to screen for a certain diagnosis in young children. They recruited children for a multi-year longitudinal study that included lots of different types of testing. We also had to answer LOTS of survey questions. In the end, they paid us a few hundred dollars and we got a pretty comprehensive report with results from multiple tests done at age 6.