title: Development of abbreviated eight-item form of the Penn Verbal Reasoning Test.
abstract: The ability to reason with language is a highly valued cognitive capacity that correlates with IQ measures and is sensitive to damage in language areas. The Penn Verbal Reasoning Test (PVRT) is a 29-item computerized test for measuring abstract analogical reasoning abilities using language. The full test can take over half an hour to administer, which limits its applicability in large-scale studies. We previously described a procedure for abbreviating a clinical rating scale and a modified procedure for reducing tests with a large number of items. Here we describe the application of the modified method to reducing the number of items in the PVRT to a parsimonious subset of items that accurately predicts the total score. As in our previous reduction studies, a split sample is used for model fitting and validation, with cross-validation to verify results. We find that an 8-item scale predicts the total 29-item score well, achieving a correlation of .9145 for the reduced form for the model fitting sample and .8952 for the validation sample. The results indicate that a drastically abbreviated version, which cuts administration time by more than 70%, can be safely administered as a predictor of PVRT performance.
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA warren@upenn.edu.
authors.forename: Warren B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Bilker
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Michael R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Wierzbicki
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Colleen M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Brensinger
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Raquel E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Gur
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Ruben C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Gur
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Penn Verbal Reasoning Test; predictive model; scale reduction