4 ms·

An IQ test may not measure "smartest" since there are many definitions of that word, but I don't see how the test itself is biased. It simply measures a number

An IQ test may not measure "smartest" since there are many definitions of that word, but I don't see how the test itself is biased. It simply measures a number we call general intelligence which happens to strongly correlate with academic/career achievement, income, and a variety of social outcomes. IQ may have different distributions across genders and races, but on an individual level a white person and a black person with similar IQs will have similar life outcomes, so where does the bias come in?

elkond 9y ago
IQ (wechsler's) is a quotient created for measuring whether person is mentally retarded or not, in context of learned informations, such as utilizing physical tools, language and mathematical inference. As any kind of psychometric measurement, it has an inherent bias (or, in other words, results are probabilistic), therefore you can't say someone has 230 "points" of IQ, because results are an interval, not a point.
- programmarchy 9y ago
  Sure, but I don't see what that has to do with race or gender.
  - elkond 9y ago
    the fact that it operates on learned information, not biological capabilities of the brain. stuff you learn is the stuff you have the ability or you're allowed to learn. society has inherent bias against nonwhites and women (in western world/usa), against women and whites (asia, africa), etc, etc.
    - programmarchy 9y ago
      The tests that measure the "g factor" (general intelligence) specifically avoid learned knowledge, and instead measure things like spatial reasoning and memory. You don't even have to be literate to take some IQ tests.
      - h0l0cube 9y ago
        g-factor finds positive correlation against a diverse set of tests. Such correlations can then be used to make predictions of performance on some tests on other unrelated tests, a 'generalized intelligence'. Such correlations can be used to designed a minimal test that map closely to g. But note: "Tests of vocabulary and general information are also typically found to have high g loadings." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) As far as I'm aware, spatial reasoning, attention, memory, and logical inference etc. don't give the complete picture. I'm happy to be corrected on this.
        programmarchy 9y ago
        I think we pretty much agree... I don't think there's really any one test that can give the complete picture. What I'm trying to get at is that it's possible to design tests that can indirectly measure general intelligence which don't require vocabulary and general information, or other aspects that may rely on social or economic privileges. And that these type of tests would allow us to draw comparisons on a broader scale. I'd imagine if an illiterate person performed well on spatial and memory tasks, then if they had learned to read they would've also scored high on a vocabulary test, too.
        h0l0cube 9y ago
        > There isn't just one test though. Like you alluded to above, there are 'culture-fair' tests, even though they may be less common. The heart of our disagreement is probably the role we see culture and genetics playing in socioeconomic outcomes. Nope. I disagree that verbal tests can be extricated from an intelligence measure, and by extension, culture. I did mention 'culture-fair' IQ tests, in quotes, and that I don't consider them to be very good. It is even suggested that such tests don't even remove cultural bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattell_Culture_Fair_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattell_Culture_Fair_III > and even though it's a bitter pill to swallow I think we need to soberly assess the genetic component of IQ I can certainly see the moral imperative in avoiding genetic mental disabilities that have profound effects on social outcomes, burden on social services, and maybe even happiness of an individual. Otherwise, what imperative is there to do so?
  - h0l0cube 9y ago
    Of language testing in particular, it is culturally biased as a testing regime. I've encountered 'culture-fair' IQ tests but they are substantially limited.
h0l0cube 9y ago
> on an individual level a white person and a black person with similar IQs will have similar life outcomes Do you have any evidence to back up that claim?
- programmarchy 9y ago
  Yes, there was a long term study on a group of children until they were young adults... maybe someone knows the paper. I'll look and edit this comment with a link if I can find it.
- programmarchy 9y ago
  Alright, I could not find the exact study I had in mind, but did come across a summary of the history of research in this area, which touches on what I was talking about: THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.186.102&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.186... See around pages 240-243, Section 3: Mean Race–IQ Differences: A Global Perspective > Many critics claim that Western-developed IQ tests are not valid for groups as culturally different as sub-Saharan Africans (e.g., Nell, 2000). The main evidence to support a claim of external bias would be if the test failed to predict performance for Africans. Even if tests only underpredicted performance for Africans compared with non-Africans, it would suggest that their test scores underestimated their “true” IQ scores. However, a review by Kendall, Verster, and von Mollendorf (1988) showed that test scores for Africans have about equal predictive validity as those for non-Africans (e.g., 0.20 to 0.50 for students’ school grades and for employees’ job performance). The review also showed that many of the factors that influence scores in Africans are the same as those for Whites (e.g., coming from an urban vs. a rural environment; being a science rather than an arts student; having had practice on the tests; and the well-documented curvilinear relationship with age). Similarly, Sternberg et al.’s (2001) study of Kenyan 12- to 15-year-olds found that IQ scores predicted school grades, with a mean r .40 (p .001; after controlling for age and socioeconomic status [SES], r .28, p .01). In Rushton et al.’s (2003) study of African and non-African engineering students at the University of the Witwatersrand, scores on the Advanced Progressive Matrices correlated with scores on the Standard Progressive Matrices measured 3 months earlier (.60 for Africans; .70 for non-Africans) and with end-of-year exam marks measured 3 months later (.34 for Africans; .28 for non-Africans). Figure 1 shows the regression of exam marks on test scores for these university students.

elkond 9y ago

IQ (wechsler's) is a quotient created for measuring whether person is mentally retarded or not, in context of learned informations, such as utilizing physical tools, language and mathematical inference. As any kind of psychometric measurement, it has an inherent bias (or, in other words, results are probabilistic), therefore you can't say someone has 230 "points" of IQ, because results are an interval, not a point.

programmarchy 9y ago
Sure, but I don't see what that has to do with race or gender.
- elkond 9y ago
  the fact that it operates on learned information, not biological capabilities of the brain. stuff you learn is the stuff you have the ability or you're allowed to learn. society has inherent bias against nonwhites and women (in western world/usa), against women and whites (asia, africa), etc, etc.
  - programmarchy 9y ago
    The tests that measure the "g factor" (general intelligence) specifically avoid learned knowledge, and instead measure things like spatial reasoning and memory. You don't even have to be literate to take some IQ tests.
    - h0l0cube 9y ago
      g-factor finds positive correlation against a diverse set of tests. Such correlations can then be used to make predictions of performance on some tests on other unrelated tests, a 'generalized intelligence'. Such correlations can be used to designed a minimal test that map closely to g. But note: "Tests of vocabulary and general information are also typically found to have high g loadings." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) As far as I'm aware, spatial reasoning, attention, memory, and logical inference etc. don't give the complete picture. I'm happy to be corrected on this.
      - programmarchy 9y ago
        I think we pretty much agree... I don't think there's really any one test that can give the complete picture. What I'm trying to get at is that it's possible to design tests that can indirectly measure general intelligence which don't require vocabulary and general information, or other aspects that may rely on social or economic privileges. And that these type of tests would allow us to draw comparisons on a broader scale. I'd imagine if an illiterate person performed well on spatial and memory tasks, then if they had learned to read they would've also scored high on a vocabulary test, too.
        h0l0cube 9y ago
        > There isn't just one test though. Like you alluded to above, there are 'culture-fair' tests, even though they may be less common. The heart of our disagreement is probably the role we see culture and genetics playing in socioeconomic outcomes. Nope. I disagree that verbal tests can be extricated from an intelligence measure, and by extension, culture. I did mention 'culture-fair' IQ tests, in quotes, and that I don't consider them to be very good. It is even suggested that such tests don't even remove cultural bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattell_Culture_Fair_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattell_Culture_Fair_III > and even though it's a bitter pill to swallow I think we need to soberly assess the genetic component of IQ I can certainly see the moral imperative in avoiding genetic mental disabilities that have profound effects on social outcomes, burden on social services, and maybe even happiness of an individual. Otherwise, what imperative is there to do so?
- h0l0cube 9y ago
  Of language testing in particular, it is culturally biased as a testing regime. I've encountered 'culture-fair' IQ tests but they are substantially limited.

h0l0cube 9y ago

> on an individual level a white person and a black person with similar IQs will have similar life outcomes Do you have any evidence to back up that claim?

programmarchy 9y ago
Yes, there was a long term study on a group of children until they were young adults... maybe someone knows the paper. I'll look and edit this comment with a link if I can find it.
programmarchy 9y ago
Alright, I could not find the exact study I had in mind, but did come across a summary of the history of research in this area, which touches on what I was talking about: THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.186.102&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.186... See around pages 240-243, Section 3: Mean Race–IQ Differences: A Global Perspective > Many critics claim that Western-developed IQ tests are not valid for groups as culturally different as sub-Saharan Africans (e.g., Nell, 2000). The main evidence to support a claim of external bias would be if the test failed to predict performance for Africans. Even if tests only underpredicted performance for Africans compared with non-Africans, it would suggest that their test scores underestimated their “true” IQ scores. However, a review by Kendall, Verster, and von Mollendorf (1988) showed that test scores for Africans have about equal predictive validity as those for non-Africans (e.g., 0.20 to 0.50 for students’ school grades and for employees’ job performance). The review also showed that many of the factors that influence scores in Africans are the same as those for Whites (e.g., coming from an urban vs. a rural environment; being a science rather than an arts student; having had practice on the tests; and the well-documented curvilinear relationship with age). Similarly, Sternberg et al.’s (2001) study of Kenyan 12- to 15-year-olds found that IQ scores predicted school grades, with a mean r .40 (p .001; after controlling for age and socioeconomic status [SES], r .28, p .01). In Rushton et al.’s (2003) study of African and non-African engineering students at the University of the Witwatersrand, scores on the Advanced Progressive Matrices correlated with scores on the Standard Progressive Matrices measured 3 months earlier (.60 for Africans; .70 for non-Africans) and with end-of-year exam marks measured 3 months later (.34 for Africans; .28 for non-Africans). Figure 1 shows the regression of exam marks on test scores for these university students.