Local norms for deaf and hard-of-hearing students

Deafness is a low incident disability and therefore deaf children are frequently not included in the norm group of norm-referenced tests (Braden, 1994). The necessity of local norms is an ongoing debate among professionals who assess deaf children (Braden, 2005). This study evaluated the utility of local norms for three different intelligence tests. One sample t-tests were run to determine significance differences between means for a deaf and hard-of-hearing sample compared to the norm group, for the Differential Ability Scales (DAS), Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT), and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III). Verbal cluster and Word Definition scores on the DAS were significantly different from the published means, as well as the Vocabulary scaled score on the WISC-III. Local norms were created for these variables