Test revisions are increasingly common in psychology and neuropsychology in particular. However, such revisions may alter in complex ways the kind of information obtained, and they may assess traits, abilities, and conditions in ways different from earlier versions. This article outlines some of the problems associated with the revision of tests facing clinicians and researchers. Three broad classes of revision are considered. Part 1 considers the aging of tests, part 2 concerns the aging of participants, and part 3 considers changes in test format. Although the article focuses largely on measures of intelligence and personality, the issues addressed in the article apply to other tests and assessment domains as well.

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A 3-factor solution of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R; Wechsler, 1981) in 260 adults with suspected head injury suggested relatively good construct validity for the factors, based on correlations with neuropsychological tests purported to measure similar abilities. The Verbal Comprehension factor was related to verbal ability, verbal memory, and executive functioning. The Perceptual Organization factor, although measuring primarily visual-spatial perception and visual constructional ability, was related to visual-spatial memory, visual attention, and executive functioning. The Freedom From Distractibility factor was correlated with two attention measures and was not associated with memory measures. Its association with executive functioning was inconsistent. The findings are discussed in terms of the multidimensional nature of neuropsychological tests and WAIS-R factors.Factor analytic studies of intelligence tests allow a better conceptualization of the cognitive dimensions that underlie performance and contribute to the IQ measure (Kaufman, 1990). A clear delineation of the underlying processes measured is particularly relevant in the case of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R; Wechsler, 1981), a test with good validity, high reliability, and excellent standardization (Sattler, 1992) used regularly in psychological assessment and deemed "the cornerstone of the neuropsychological battery" (Zillmer, Waechtler, Harris, & Khan, 1992, p. 29). Although numerous studies have delineated the factor structure of the WAIS-R using the standardization sample and various clinical groups (for a review, see Kaufman, 1990, andSattler, 1992), the construct validity of the factors has been less rigorously studied.Studies of the WAIS-R have typically identified a Verbal Comprehension factor consisting of the Vocabulary, Information, Comprehension, and Similarities subtests, and a Perceptual Organization factor, consisting most frequently of Block Design, Object Assembly, Picture Completion, and in some analyses, Picture Arrangement. The third factor in three-factor solutions, Freedom From Distractibility, usually consists of Arithmetic and Digit Span (Parker, 1983), and less consistently, Digit Symbol (Kaufman, 1990;Roszkowski, 1983).Consensus on the most stable factor structure for the WAIS-R has largely wavered between the two-and three-factor solutions. Leckliter, Matarazzo, and Silverstein (1986) concluded that the derivation of two-factor versus three-factor solution was

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This paper documents an important development in Robert Boyle's natural-philosophical method – his use from the 1660s onwards of ‘heads’ and ‘inquiries’ as a means of organizing his data, setting himself an agenda when studying a subject and soliciting information from others. Boyle acknowledged that he derived this approach from Francis Bacon, but he had not previously used it in his work, and the reason why it came to the fore when it did is not apparent from his printed and manuscript corpus. It is necessary to look beyond Boyle to his milieu for the cause, in this case to the influence on him of the Royal Society. Whereas the Royal Society in its early years is often seen as putting into practice a programme pioneered by Boyle, this crucial methodological change on his part seems rather to have been stimulated by the society's early concern for systematic data-collecting. In this connection, it is here shown that a key text, Boyle's influential ‘General Heads for a Natural History of a Country, Great or small’, published in Philosophical Transactions in 1666, represents more of a shared initiative between him and the society than has hitherto been appreciated.