IQ+and+Testing

// Jennifer Van Norman //
 * IQ and Testing **


 * What is an IQ?**

IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient. It is a measure of relative intelligence determined by a standardized test.


 * Some History on IQ Testing**

From 1910 until about 1918 the process of IQ testing picked up speed. IQ testing at that time was already being used in courts of law, schools, and by doctors. In 1917 psychologists pitched the idea of IQ testing to the armed forces. While other branches accepted IQ testing without incident, the army did not. One of the major problems the army saw with IQ testing was the amount of time needed to test the new recruits because at this time, testing was done one on one with a psychologist. Sometimes this is still how IQ testing is adminitered today. However, at that time in history there was a need for efficient testing. Frederick Kelley, the dean of the University of Kansas created the idea of multiple choice questions around the same time. Then Lewis Madison Terman, a Stanford psychologist, used this new technology to develop the Stanford-Binet test we still use today. They used the Stanford-Binet test for the new recrutis.

One interesting fact when it comes to IQ testing is people today are scoring much higher than people even a century ago. The explanation for this is included in the following blog by Wes Carroll, a tutor for exceptional high school students:
 * Explanation of Scores Rising Over Time:**

Friday, May 7, 2010
===Excerpt on IQ testing===

I found this quite interesting:

"Children develop only as the environment demands development. In 1981, New Zealand-based psychologist James Flynn discovered just how profoundly true that statement is. Comparing raw IQ scores over nearly a century, Flynn saw that they kept going up: every few years, the new batch of IQ test takers seemed to be smarter than the old batch. Twelve-year-olds in the 1980s performed better than twelve-year-olds in the 1970s, who performed better than twelve-year-olds in the 1960s, and so on. This trend wasn't limited to a certain region or culture, and the differences were not trivial. On average, IQ test takers improved over their predecessors by three points every ten years - a staggering difference of eighteen points over two generations.

"The differences were so extreme, they were hard to wrap one's head around. Using a late-twentieth-century average score of 100, the comparative score for the year 1900 was calculated to be about 60 - leading to the truly absurd conclusion, acknowledged Flynn, 'that a majority of our ancestors were mentally retarded.' The so-called Flynn effect raised eyebrows throughout the world of cognitive research. Obviously, the human race had not evolved into a markedly smarter species in less than one hundred years. Something else was going on.

"For Flynn, the pivotal clue came in his discovery that the increases were not uniform across all areas but were concentrated in certain subtests. Contemporary kids did not do any better than their ancestors when it came to general knowledge or mathematics. But in the area of abstract reasoning, reported Flynn, there were 'huge and embarrassing' improvements. The further back in time he looked, the less test takers seemed comfortable with hypotheticals and intuitive problem solving. Why? Because a century ago, in a less complicated world, there was very little familiarity with what we now consider basic abstract concepts. '[The intelligence of] our ancestors in 1900 was anchored in everyday reality,' explains Flynn. 'We differ from them in that we can use abstractions and logic and the hypothetical ... Since 1950, we have become more ingenious in going beyond previously learned rules to solve problems on the spot.'

"Examples of abstract notions that simply didn't exist in the minds of our nineteenth-century ancestors include the theory of natural selection (formulated in 1864), and the concepts of control group (1875) and random sample (1877). A century ago, the scientific method itself was foreign to most Americans. The general public had simply not yet been conditioned to think abstractly.

"The catalyst for the dramatic IQ improvements, in other words, was not some mysterious genetic mutation or magical nutritional supplement but what Flynn described as 'the [cultural] transition from pre-scientific to post-scientific operational thinking.' Over the course of the twentieth century, basic principles of science slowly filtered into public consciousness, transforming the world we live in. That transition, says Flynn, 'represents nothing less than a liberation of the human mind.'

"The scientific world-view, with its vocabulary, taxonomies, and detachment of logic and the hypothetical from concrete referents, has begun to permeate the minds of post-industrial people. This has paved the way for mass education on the university level and the emergence of an intellectual cadre without whom our present civilization would be inconceivable.

"Perhaps the most striking of Flynn's observations is this: 98 percent of IQ test takers today score better than the average test taker in 1900. The implications of this realization are extraordinary. It means that in just one century, improvements in our social discourse and our schools have dramatically raised the measurable intelligence of almost everyone.

"So much for the idea of fixed intelligence."

IQ is the measure of mental quotient. An example of how IQ's are measured follows: "A 10-year-old who scored as high as the average 13-year-old, for example, would have an IQ of 130 {100 + (13/10)}. Because this formula only worked for children, it was replaced by a projection of the measured rank on the Gaussian bell curve with a center value (average IQ) of 100, and a standard deviation of 15 or occasionally 16. Thus the modern version of the IQ is a mathematical transformation of the rank (see quartile, percentile, percentile rank), which is the primary result of an IQ test. To differentiate the two scores, modern scores are sometimes referred to as "deviance IQ", while the age-specific scores are referred to as 'ratio IQ' (Berger, 2005)." There are many different types of intelligence tests. Some tests use a single type of item or question. Most tests conclude with an overall score and individual subtest scores. "Regardless of design, all IQ tests attempt to measure the same general intelligence. Component tests are generally designed and selected because they are found to be predictive of later intellectual development, such as educational achievement. IQ also correlates with job performance, socioeconomic advancement, and "social pathologies". Recent work has demonstrated links between IQ and health, longevity, and functional literacy (Berger,2005)."
 * What is IQ testing? What kinds of IQ tests are available?**

IQ testing is done to measure relative intelligence. “The first intelligence test was created in 1905 by Alfred Binet and Théophile Simon to determine which French school children were too “slow” to benefit from regular instruction. Binet came up with the idea of mental age when he noticed that children are increasingly able to learn difficult concepts and perform difficult tasks as they get older. Most children reach the same level of complexity at about the same time, but some children are slower reaching those levels. A 6-year-old child who can do no more than a 3-year-old has a mental age of 3. Wilhelm Stern divided the mental age by the chronological age to get a “Mental Quotient.” ([] )

A mental quotient is Mental Age/ Chronological age. If you multiply this by 100 you have your IQ. The average IQ is between 85 and 115.


 * Other IQ tests include: **

WISC-IV (children) WAIS-III (by far the most commonly used) WPPSI (young children) KBIT DAS (children) RAVEN STANFORD-BINET


 * Is IQ Testing Accurate? **

IQ testing should not be the only type of measurement or assessment for students. There are arguments that racial, ethnic and socioeconomic status can affect the score students receive on a test. Some people also argue that some students are not good test takers. In the end, it is best if teachers do not rely solely on IQ testing.

"IQ tests such as WISC and Stanford-Binet have high correlations with giftedness or high performance. These tests have verbal and performance parts with 5 sub-tests each part. So they are pretty comprehensive intelligence tests. However, these tests can't identify other valuable talents such as creativity, artistic, and leadership (Yoon, Reading Discussion, Week 4)."

"Also there has been cultural biases in IQ testing. That's why psychologists often use culturally reduced or culture free intelligence tests like Progressive Matrices (measuring logical reasoning) to measure different types of giftedness for ethnic minority students. Anyway, we still have issues in identifying GATE students, but recent trend in GATE is to differentiate curriculum and instruction for those GATE students in regular classrooms (Yoon, Reading Discussion, Week 4)."

In an article by Asa G. Hilliard III, titled Alternatives to IQ Testing: An Approach to the Identification of Gifted "Minority" Children, we can look at IQ testing to identify minority children. This article points out students "varied cultural experiences are the raw materials through which mental ability or aptitudes are expressed. A single IQ test cannot guage the aptitude for all of the many cutures we have in the United states."


 * What is being done with IQ testing?**

IQ testing is used in lower grades to determine how much a student will achieve in their educational career. According to the vidoes in week four's reading discussion, these tests are used to determine whether a fourth grader will take calculus and other advanced classes. The problem with this is how can we determine from an average score that a student will remain average? By labeling a student as such, schools are closing doors for the student. It will be harder for them to get into advanced classes, or into college in the future. Follow this link to watch the video: []

One of the most well known legal cases for IQ testing was a case ruled in 1979 by U.S. District Judge Robert F. Peckham. Peckham had barred California public schools from using standardized IQ tests for determining whether academically struggling black students should be placed in special classes for the mildly mentally retarded. Siding with black parents and others who sought to stop the practice, Peckham found that the commonly used tests were racially and culturally biased and resulted in large numbers of blacks being wrongly labeled as retarded and consigned to "dead-end" programs. This ruling was overturned by Peckham in1986 after another group of black parents sued to allow their children to be given I.Q. tests to evaluate learning disabilities. He said further hearings were needed to decide whether a renewed ban was required to keep blacks from being misplaced in classes for the retarded. However he passed away before further proceedings took place.
 * Legal Issues:**

There are several more cases about intelligence testing- //The following is adapted from Vincent Bergers article "Intelligence Tests":// Legal barriers, most prominently the U.S. Civil Rights Act, as interpreted in the 1971 United States Supreme Court decision Griggs v. Duke Power Co., have prevented American employers from using cognitive ability tests as a controlling factor in selecting employees where (1) the use of the test would have a disparate impact on hiring by race and (2) where the test is not shown to be directly relevant to the job or class of jobs at issue. Instead, where there is not direct relevance to the job or class of jobs at issue, tests have only been legally permitted to be used in conjunction with a subjective appraisal process. The U.S. military uses the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT), as higher scores correlate with significant increases in effectiveness of both individual soldiers and units,and Microsoft is known for using non-illegal tests that correlate with IQ tests as part of the interview process, weighing the results even more than experience in many cases. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act generally prohibits employment practices that are unfair or discriminatory. One provision of Title VII, codified at 42 USC 2000e-2(h), specifically provides that it is not an "unlawful employment practice for an employer to give and to act upon the results of any professionally developed ability test provided that such test, its administration or action upon the results is not designed, intended or used to discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin." This statute was interpreted by the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 US 424 (1971). In Griggs, the Court ruled that the reliance solely on a general IQ test that was not found to be specifically relevant to the job at issue was a discriminatory practice where it had a "disparate impact" on hiring. The Court gave considerable weight in its ruling to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulation interpreting Section 2002e-2(h)'s reference to a "professionally developed ability test" to mean "a test which fairly measures the knowledge or skills required by the particular job or class of jobs which the applicant seeks, or which fairly affords the employer a chance to measure the applicant's ability to perform a particular job or class of jobs." In other words, the use of any particular test would need to be shown to be relevant to the particular job or class of jobs at issue. In the educational context, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted similar state and federal statutes to require that IQ Tests not be used in a manner that was determinative of tracking students into classes designed for the mentally retarded. Larry P. v. Riles, 793 F.2d 969 (9th Cir. 1984). The Supreme Court of the United States has utilized IQ test results during the sentencing phase of some criminal proceedings. The Supreme Court case of Atkins v. Virginia, decided June 20, 2002, held that executions of mentally challenged criminals are "cruel and unusual punishments" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The Social Security Administration also uses IQ results when deciding disability claims. In certain cases, IQ results alone are used (in those cases where the result shows a "full scale IQ of 59 or less") and in other cases IQ results are used along with other factors (for a "full scale IQ of 60 through 70") when deciding whether a claimant qualifies for Social Security Disability benefits. In addition, because people with IQs below 80 (the 10th percentile, Department of Defense "Category V") are difficult to train, federal law bars their induction into the military. As of 2005, only 4 percent of the recruits were allowed to score as low as in the 16th to 30th percentile, a grouping known as "Category IV" on the U.S. Armed Forces' mental-aptitude exam. **The Following are videos about IQ testing:** [|History of the IQ Test]

[|History of IQ Testing- As seen in the discussion]


 * References: **


 * Clark, B. (2008). //Growing up gifted//. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.


 * Bainbridge, C. (2011). Iq [Web log message]. Retrieved from []


 * Hillard, A. G. (1976). Alternatives to IQ testing: an approach to the identification of gifted "minority" children. final report. //Reference materials//. (p. 167). Sacramento: California State Dept. of Education, Sacramento. Div. of Special Education. Retrieved from []


 * Berger, V. (2005). //Intelligence tests//. Retrieved from []


 * Carrol, W. (2010, May 07). Excerpt on iq testing [Web log message]. Retrieved from []


 * Merl, J. (1991, August 05). Court ban on iq tests for blacks sparks parents. //LA Times//. Retrieved from []

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 * Robert f. peckham, 72, influential federal judge. (1993, Frebruary 17). //New York Times//. Retrieved from []