Reply to Sanchez Escobedo and Hollingworth: Why the Mexican Norms for the WAIS-III continue to be inadequate.

The discussion in Drs. Sanchez Escobedo and Hollingworth's paper independently confirms virtually all our observations regarding the psychometric and interpretive deficiencies of the Mexican norms for very high-stakes decisions, such as that involved in an Atkins hearing. Test publishers have an ethical obligation to caution potential users against the premature use of a developing assessment that does not yet meet the needed precision and evidence of validity required for very high-stakes decisions.

Serious problems with the Mexican norms for the WAIS-III when assessing mental retardation in capital cases.

A Spanish-language translation of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III (WAIS-III), normed in Mexico, is sometimes used when evaluating Spanish-speaking defendants in capital cases in order to diagnose possible mental retardation (MR). Although the manual for the Mexican test suggests use of the U.S.

Empirical Bayes estimation of the prevalence of uninsured individuals by county in the state of Tennessee and analyses of predictive factors.

Lawmakers at the state level require good estimates of those without health insurance in the areas they serve to inform policy decisions. These estimates are often built on inadequate data from smaller geographic areas, such as counties. The Small Area Estimates Branch of the U.

Assessing the impact of the local environment on birth outcomes: a case for HLM.

Hierarchical linear Models (HLM) is a useful way to analyze the relationships between community level environmental data, individual risk factors, and birth outcomes. With HLM we can determine the effects of potentially remediable environmental conditions (e.g.