Wonderlic Test - Reliability of The Wonderlic

Reliability of The Wonderlic

In 1982, Carl Dodrill conducted a study in which 57 adults were administered the Wonderlic twice over a five-year period. In the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Dodrill reported that the test-retest reliability for the Wonderlic was .94.

In 1956, Weaver and Boneau reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology that two of the five forms, A and B, that were published at the time were harder than the others which caused scores on those forms to be significantly lower than scores obtained on forms C-F. Concerning these observed differences, Weaver and Boneau state: "This accords with the history of the development of the test. Forms D, E, and F are made up of items selected from the Otis Higher, while A and B were developed later and include types of items not found in the Otis." Those findings, seemingly, invalidate the claim that those forms were equivalent or consistent. E. N. Hay made a similar observation as well. Hay found that form F was significantly easier than Form D. Furthermore, Kazmier found Form B to be the most difficult of the five forms and, thus, recommended that it "not be regarded as directly equivalent to any of the forms." Kazmier also found Forms D and F to be significantly different from each other and recommended that these forms be regarded as inequivalent. In a study of the Wonderlic's test-retest reliability, conducted in 1992, Stuart McKelvie "concluded that conscious repetition of specific responses did not seriously inflate the estimate of test-retest reliability." To put it simply, one's memory of some of the answers does not significantly affect one's score on the Wonderlic.

More recently, according to a 1989 article in Psychological Reports, the Wonderlic scored a r=.87 on the reliability scale compared along with the Pearson test score of r=.21.