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The current study investigated whether the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT; Wonderlic, 1992), a brief measure of cognitive ability frequently used in personnel settings and in career assessment, is more closely associated with either the theoretical constructs of fluid or crystallized intelligence as assessed by the Kaufman Adult Intelligence Test (KAIT; Kaufman & Kaufman, 1993). Sixty-seven adults were administered these instruments in counterbalanced order. Results indicated that the WPT was significantly positively related to the KAIT Composite IQ, Crystallized IQ, and Fluid IQ scores and was equally associated with both fluid and crystallized intelligence. In addition, the mean WPT score was not significantly different from the mean KAIT IQ scores. It is concluded that the WPT measures general (composite) intelligence and may be used most effectively as an instrument to assess individuals for jobs requiring both fluid and crystallized abilities.
Practitioners often have a need for brief measures of cognitive ability. The Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT; Wonderlic, 1992) is one such test that is widely used in pre-employment testing (Murphy, 1984). Two reasons for its popularity are its brevity of administration and ease in scoring. The WPT is a 50-item pencil and paper test that requires only 12 minutes administration time. Total scores are purported to measure intellectual ability and have been found to correlate with scores from more established tests of intelligence. It has been shown to have good concurrent validity by being highly correlated with the Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS; Wechsler, 1955) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Revised (WAIS-R; Wechsler, 1981) (e.g., Dodrill, 1981; Edinger, Shipley, Watkins, & Hammett, 1985). Only one study (Hawkins, Faraone, Pepple, Seidman, & Tsuang, 1990) has compared the WPT to the Verbal IQ (VIQ) and Performance IQ (PIQ) of the WAIS-R. Correlations were .86 and .84 respectively, and the authors concluded that the WPT "taps intellectual functions widely and may reasonably be considered a test of global intelligence" (p. 200) with no reference to fluid or crystallized abilities. Indeed, one should be cautioned not to interpret the VIQ or PIQ as measures of crystallized or fluid abilities because research does not support this interpretation (Flanagan, McGrew, & Ortiz, 2000).
In this study, we attempted to determine whether the WPT is...