Houston, Susan (2008) Profiles and Clusters: Profile Analysis of the Australian Edition of the WISC IV for a Clinical Sample. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
The Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC) is a widely used to assess children’s cognitive functioning. The fourth edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC-IV) (Wechsler, 2003) was published with Australian norms in 2005 making it an important tool for cognitive assessment of children in Australia. There is ongoing debate about the use of the WISC to inform decisions around the provision of additional educational support for students with disabilities and learning difficulties. Profile analysis has been conducted on earlier editions of the WISC to identify core patterns of index profiles for normative samples, however, few studies have investigated WISC-IV profiles or profiles of clinical samples. This study analysed data from WISC-IV index profiles of a clinical sample of primary aged children from Mackay, North Queensland to identify if there were distinctive profile patterns for students diagnosed with intellectual impairment, speech-language impairment, or learning difficulties. A two-step procedure to identify close index score relationships was conducted using agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis followed by k-means cluster analysis to determine cluster membership. Findings showed that while distinct profiles were found for both the diagnostic groups and the clusters there were more similarities of cognitive behaviour between the diagnostic groups than within these groups. Implications of these results are discussed in relation to the practices of Education Queensland in the identification and resourcing of students with disabilities and learning difficulties.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Sciences - Department of Psychology (Up to 30 Jun 2013) |
| Supervisors: | Lucille Douglas |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 13 Nov 2025 02:28 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Nov 2025 02:28 |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52426 |
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