(SAGES-3) Screening Assessment for Gifted Elementary and Middle School Students-Third Edition

The SAGES-3 has two levels: K–3 for students in kindergarten through third grade, and 4–8 for students in fourth through eighth grade. Each level has four subtests. The first subtest, Nonverbal Reasoning, measures the student’s ability to solve problems by identifying relationships among figures and pictures. The second subtest, Language Arts/Social Studies, measures the student’s achievement in language arts (i.e., literature, writing) and social studies. The third subtest, Verbal Reasoning, measures the student’s ability to solve problems by identifying the relationships between pairs of words. And the fourth subtest, Mathematics/Science, measures the student’s abilities in those two subjects. 

The SAGES-3 provides two domain composites (Reasoning Ability and Academic Ability) and one overall composite (General Ability). The indexes of the Nonverbal Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning subtests combine to form the Reasoning Ability composite, and the indexes of the Language Arts/Social Studies and Mathematics/Science subtests combine to form the Academic Ability composite. The four subtest indexes combine to form the General Ability composite. The Examiner’s Manual discusses the test’s theoretical and research-based foundation, item development, standardization, administration and scoring procedures, reliability and validity, and guidelines for using and interpreting the test’s results.

New Features

• All-new normative data were collected from 2015 to 2017.
• The normative information is stratified by age relative to geography, gender, race, ethnicity, household income, and educational attainment of the subject’s parents.
• Items were added to each subtest to eliminate possible ceiling effects.
• An additional subtest, Verbal Reasoning, was added to sample more than one aspect of reasoning.
• The test now has two domain composite scores (Reasoning Ability and Academic Ability), as well as an overall composite score (General Ability).
• New and extensive studies of test bias (both differential item functioning and subgroup comparison studies) were conducted, indicating that the SAGES-3 possesses little or no bias in regard to gender, race, or ethnicity.
• New and extensive studies of the floors, ceilings, and item gradients for the SAGES-3’s subtests and composite were conducted. The results indicate that the SAGES-3 has substantial and consistently excellent ceilings, even for the oldest and brightest examinees whose aptitude may be assessed by the instrument.
• All-new reliability and validity studies were prepared, including diagnostic accuracy analyses, which are considered the most rigorous techniques for establishing validity today. These analyses involve the computation of sensitivity and specificity indexes and the receiver operating characteristic/area under the curve (ROC/AUC) statistic.
• Additional studies of construct-identification validity—including studies of age differences, subgroup performance, relationship to spoken language, and confirmatory factor analysis of the test’s structure—were provided. These studies indicate that the SAGES-3’s internal structure is sound and its results are valid.