McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities

The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) is a psychological test given to young children. 'the McCarthy scales present a carefully constructed individual test of human ability.' The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) is a psychological test given to young children. 'the McCarthy scales present a carefully constructed individual test of human ability.' The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities was created by Dorothea McCarthy in 1972. However, McCarthy died shortly after the test was actually published, so the refining and strengthening of the McCarthy scales has fallen to interested researchers. William Van Ornum, Linda Dunlap, and Milton Shore provide a detailed description of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities in Psychological Testing Across the Lifespan. Van Ornum et al. (2008) emphasize that a key contribution of McCarthy was creating a test measuring 'cognitive ability' rather than 'intelligence.' By doing so, interpretation of the test need not enter the sometimes excoriating debates regarding intelligence, genetics, lifelong proclivity, etc. Rather, the scores can be simply stated as 'strengths' and 'weaknesses.' A T-score with a mean of 50 and SD of 10 is used so these scores will not be interpreted as IQ scores by teachers and parents. Van Ornum has commented: 'This is one of the best tests ever created for children. It's fun and engaging, with pictures, a hopping game, and even a xylophone!' The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities was intended to measure children from ages 2 to 8. The scale is very sound, and if there was more validity data, it could have very well obtained the same status as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. In fact, the Wechsler scale actually overlaps the McCarthy's age range. Further, The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities does seem to offer certain advantages over the WPPSI-III and also the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales for the 2 to 8 year old range. The test produces both a pattern of scores as well as a variety of composite scores, which is a plus. This allows analyzing of both individual sections as well as the overall test. In fact, the concept of combining various subtests to form a composite score is such an important idea that it has become one of the main features in the 2003 fifth edition of the Stanford-Binet scale. The essence of the test is based on a wide variety of functions that have been long held to be related to human intelligence. There are 18 tests in the battery that sample these different functions, 15 of which are combined into a composite score which is known as the general cognitive index (CGI). This section has a standard score with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 16. In general, The psychometric properties of the scale are good, with evidence of factorial validity and predictive validity. 'The reliability coefficients for the general cognitive index tend to run in the low 90's', and the data for validity is encouraging as well. Correlations have been found with the Stanford-Binet scale (Form L-M) and the WPPSI: 'the general cognitive index correlates at .81 with the Binet IQ and at .71 with the WPPSI full-scale IQ.' Additionally, the manual for the test provides additionally validity coefficients, although based on small samples. The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities breaks down into two main sub-parts