UK Standardisation of the British Abilities Scales (3rd Revision)
The Psychometrics Centre is currently working with GL Assessment (formerly NFER-Nelson) on a new UK standardisation of the British Ability Scales; the 3rd revision of this important instrument. The British Ability Scales (BAS) have long been established as one of the UK’s leading standardised batteries for assessing a child’s cognitive ability. It is also unique in its use of modern psychometric methods for standardisation and scoring purposes, and was the first test of its type to introduce Rasch scaling to the norming process.
BAS-III is an individually administered psychometric test designed for use by educational and clinical psychologists for the assessment of children referred for learning and/or behavioural difficulties. There are two batteries: Early Years BAS-III is for children between the ages of 3 years 0 months and 8 years 11 months, and School Age BAS-III for children and students aged from 6 years 0 months to 17 years 11 months. We are developing new UK norms based on data collected from a national representative sample stratified by region, gender, ethnic group and parental education level in terms of the National Census. The project has been assisted by over 50 Educational Psychologists who have tested 1,480 nursery, primary and secondary schoolchildren and students in over 100 schools nationally.
On the basis of recent changes to the National Curriculum, and on feedback received from users of the 2nd Edition, several important changes have been made to this exciting new upgrade. BAS-III contains a new, easy to use, multiple-choice Recognition of Designs scale that will replace the BAS-II Recall of Designs drawing scale. The attainment scales of Number Skills and Spelling have been revised to reflect National Curriculum changes, and there is also a new parallel form of Word Reading. As well as a simplified one-level structure for the Early Years BAS-III, minor changes have also been made to its Picture Similarities, Naming Vocabulary and Verbal Comprehension scales. There will also be improved and more user-friendly scoring and analysis software, and updated full colour illustrations across a range of scales, making the assessment more appealing to the child.
For nearly two decades The Psychometrics Centre has worked with major test publishers on the Anglicisation and standardisation of many well known tests for use in the UK. In the past we have standardised the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (both WISC-III and WISC IV), the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WORD, WOND, WOLD and WIAT-II), the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-IV) and the Ravens Progressive Matrices for Pearson Assessment (formerly the Psychological Corporation and Harcourt Assessment)
BAS-III is due to be published in Autumn 2011. For more information please contact GL-Assessment.