What is the TOPS-2 Adolescent? The Test of Problem Solving 2 explained
The TOPS-2 Adolescent is a 40-minute test of language-based critical thinking for ages 12 to 17. It is not an IQ test. Here is what it measures and scores.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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The TOPS-2 Adolescent, formally the Test of Problem Solving 2: Adolescent, is a norm-referenced measure of language-based critical thinking for students aged 12 years 0 months through 17 years 11 months. A speech-language pathologist or other qualified examiner gives it one-on-one in about 40 minutes, presenting short passages while the student follows along in print and answers out loud. It is not an IQ test, and it does not produce an IQ score. It works as a companion measure to cognitive testing, describing how well a teenager uses language to draw inferences, weigh options, and explain a decision, which is a narrower question than how much general reasoning ability that teenager has.
What the TOPS-2 Adolescent measures
According to PRO-ED, the test's current publisher, the TOPS-2 Adolescent "assesses critical thinking abilities based on the student's language strategies using logic and experience." The publisher draws an explicit contrast with tests that get at thinking skills through mathematical, spatial, or nonverbal content. Everything on this test runs through language.
The scenarios are built around situations a teenager would plausibly recognize, covering five decision-making skill areas the publisher describes as important to academic, problem-solving, and social success. PRO-ED credits the critical-thinking research of Richard Paul as the framework behind the item design, and lists the cognitive processes the test targets: understanding and comprehension, analysis, interpretation, self-regulation, evaluation, explanation, inference and insight, decision making, intent and purpose, problem solving, and acknowledgment.
That framing matters when a score lands on a report. A low result describes how a student handles reasoning delivered in language, and it diagnoses nothing on its own.
The five subtests and how the test is given
The test uses 18 written passages, and the student answers questions from five subtests keyed to those passages. PRO-ED describes them as follows.
• Making inferences: The student gives a logical explanation for a situation, combining what is stated or visible with background knowledge and previous experience. Strong performers here produce plausible inferences, predictions, or interpretations.
• Determining solutions: The student supplies a logical solution for some aspect of the situation presented in the passage.
• Problem solving: The student recognizes the problem, generates alternative solutions, evaluates the options, and states an appropriate solution. This subtest also asks how a specific problem could have been avoided.
• Interpreting perspectives: The student evaluates other points of view in order to reach a conclusion.
• Transferring insights: The student compares analogous situations using information stated in the passage.
Administration is deliberately dual-channel. The Texas Statewide Leadership for Autism Training summary notes that items are presented both verbally and in print, a design choice meant to keep weak auditory memory or weak reading from dragging down a score about reasoning. PAR, which also distributes the test, describes the examiner reading the item while the printed passage stays visible. Answers are spoken.
The complete kit contains an Examiner's Manual, a Reading Passages Book, and 20 test forms; PRO-ED also sells a digital edition. PAR lists the test at qualification level B, so the purchaser needs relevant graduate training or professional credentials. Resellers place it at grades 7 through 12.
Scores, norms, and what the publisher reports
Raw performance converts to standard scores, percentile ranks, and age equivalents, with a Total Test Score serving as the overall composite. PAR reports that the standardization sample included 1,051 students, that the item pool study drew on 526, and that both samples were matched to the U.S. Census on race, gender, age, and educational placement. An additional 138 individuals with language disorders took part in the validity studies, which is how the publisher supports the claim that the test separates students with language-based thinking difficulties from those without.
Two honest caveats belong next to those numbers. First, neither PRO-ED nor PAR publishes reliability coefficients for the TOPS-2 Adolescent on its product pages, so an examiner who wants internal-consistency or stability figures has to open the manual rather than take them from the catalog. Second, the norms date to the test's 2007 copyright. PRO-ED's product pages carry a standing instruction to contact the company for revised normative tables, which is a reasonable signal that the original tables have aged and that anyone interpreting a score should ask which table was used.
Age equivalents deserve particular caution. They are intuitive and widely misread, since the spacing between age equivalents is uneven and a gap of a year or two means very different things at different points on the scale. Standard scores and percentile ranks carry the interpretive weight.
How the TOPS-2 Adolescent differs from the TOPS-3 elementary version
The two tests share a family name and a publisher, and they are routinely confused. They are separate instruments with different formats. Our article on the TOPS-3 covers the elementary test in full, so here is the short version of what separates them.
• Age band: The TOPS-2 Adolescent covers 12-0 through 17-11. The current elementary test, the TOPS-3E: NU, covers 6-0 through 12-11. They overlap only during the twelfth year, where an examiner picks based on the student's language level and the reason for testing.
• Stimulus format: The adolescent test uses 18 printed passages about teenage situations, read aloud while the student follows the text. The elementary test uses a Picture Book, asking a child to reason about picture stimuli and answer verbally.
• Subtests: Five on the adolescent test, six on the elementary test, and the content differs. The elementary version covers sequencing, negative questions, predicting, and determining causes alongside making inferences and problem solving.
• Length: 40 minutes for the adolescent test, 35 minutes for the elementary test.
• Norm recency and reported statistics: This is the largest practical gap. The elementary test received a normative update, and PRO-ED publishes the detail. Its Total Score was renamed the Problem Solving Index and reported as a standard score with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, the normative sample was stratified against the 2016 ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States, the average coefficient alpha is .82, and diagnostic-accuracy analyses are reported. The adolescent test has no equivalent updated edition and no comparable published figures.
How the TOPS-2 Adolescent relates to an IQ test
A useful way to describe the relationship is content overlap without construct equivalence. Verbal comprehension tasks on an individually administered cognitive battery, such as those on the WISC-V, also ask a student to listen, reason, and answer aloud, and scores on language-heavy reasoning tasks tend to correlate with general ability. A full-scale IQ, however, draws on several ability domains at once, including nonverbal and speed-based ones, while the TOPS-2 Adolescent stays inside the verbal channel. Two students with the same full-scale IQ can perform very differently on it.
That is exactly why it gets used. When a teenager's verbal reasoning looks weaker than the rest of the cognitive profile, an evaluator needs a finer-grained look at what the student does with language under load, and often pairs that with a broad language battery such as the CELF-5.
Research also argues against reading too much into the gap between language performance and nonverbal ability. In a population study of more than 7,000 five-year-olds in England, Norbury and colleagues found an overall language disorder prevalence near 10 percent, and reported that children with low-average nonverbal IQ looked much like children with average nonverbal IQ across language composites, severity, and early academic outcomes. Their conclusion was that access to specialist services should not depend on nonverbal IQ. Applied here, a weak TOPS-2 Adolescent score is worth acting on whether or not it lines up neatly with a cognitive score.
Griswold and colleagues, who used the predecessor of this test with adolescents, documented an extraordinary range of achievement within a small group of students with Asperger syndrome, with listening comprehension among the weakest areas.
Limitations and where a broader ability measure fits
Several limits are worth stating plainly. The response format is open-ended and spoken, so a student who thinks well yet expresses ideas slowly or sparsely can score below the level of the underlying reasoning. The heavy language load means a single low score has several possible explanations, among them vocabulary gaps, attention, and unfamiliarity with the cultural situations in the passages. The 2007 norms also raise the question of which comparison group a percentile rank actually reflects.
None of that makes the test less useful; it makes it one input. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association describes assessment of spoken language disorders as work done by speech-language pathologists using a variety of measures and activities, formal and informal together. No single instrument identifies a condition on its own, and diagnosis belongs to qualified clinicians working from a full picture.
For adults who want a separate, broad picture of general reasoning ability rather than a language-specific one, the RIOT IQ test covers different ground. Developed by RIOT IQ with psychometrician Dr. Russell T. Warne, the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test uses 15 subtests across six cognitive indices, verbal reasoning, fluid reasoning, spatial ability, working memory, processing speed, and reaction time. It takes about 52 minutes and reports scores on the familiar mean-100, standard-deviation-15 scale. It is built for ages 18 and up, and it does not replace an individually administered diagnostic evaluation for a student in school.
Frequently asked questions
Is the TOPS-2 Adolescent an IQ test?
No. It measures language-based critical thinking and produces a Total Test Score with percentile ranks and age equivalents, not an IQ. It is used alongside cognitive testing rather than in place of it.
What ages does the TOPS-2 Adolescent cover?
PRO-ED lists the range as 12 years 0 months through 17 years 11 months, which resellers map to roughly grades 7 through 12.
How long does the TOPS-2 Adolescent take?
About 40 minutes, given individually. The elementary version of the test runs about 35 minutes.
Who can buy and administer the TOPS-2 Adolescent?
PAR lists it at qualification level B, which restricts purchase to professionals with appropriate graduate training or credentials. In schools it is most often given by a speech-language pathologist.
Has the TOPS-2 Adolescent been updated since 2007?
There is no newer edition of the adolescent test. PRO-ED still sells the 2007 kit and directs examiners to contact the company for revised normative tables. Only the elementary test, the TOPS-3E: NU, received a published normative update.
What is the difference between the TOPS-2 Adolescent and the TOPS-3?
The TOPS-3E: NU is for ages 6-0 through 12-11 and uses picture stimuli across six subtests. The TOPS-2 Adolescent is for ages 12-0 through 17-11 and uses 18 printed passages across five subtests. The elementary version also has newer norms and published reliability and diagnostic-accuracy statistics.
References
1. PRO-ED. (2007). TOPS 2-Adolescent: Test of Problem Solving 2-Adolescent (Complete Kit). proedinc.com
2. PAR. (n.d.). TOPS-2: Test of Problem Solving 2: Adolescent. parinc.com
3. Texas Statewide Leadership for Autism Training. (n.d.). Test of Problem Solving 2: Adolescent. txautism.net
4. PRO-ED. (n.d.). TOPS-3E: NU: Test of Problem Solving-Third Edition Elementary: Normative Update (Complete Kit). proedinc.com
5. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.). Spoken language disorders. asha.org
6. Norbury, C. F., Gooch, D., Wray, C., Baird, G., Charman, T., Simonoff, E., Vamvakas, G., %26 Pickles, A. (2016). The impact of nonverbal ability on prevalence and clinical presentation of language disorder: Evidence from a population study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 57%2811%29, 1247-1257. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
7. Griswold, D. E., Barnhill, G. P., Myles, B. S., Hagiwara, T., %26 Simpson, R. L. (2002). Asperger syndrome and academic achievement. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 17%282%29, 94-102. eric.ed.gov
Hero photo: An empty examination hall set out with individual desks. Photo by Snooze123, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).
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