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Countries don't have to do tests, that is done by people who take tests organised by institutions, The results are grouped by whatever factors the test develope
by hagbard_c 3mo ago
Countries don't have to do tests, that is done by people who take tests organised by institutions, The results are grouped by whatever factors the test developers consider interesting and the results are published. We can quibble about the value of these results, about the value of IQ as a concept, about the sample size of IQ-test-taking groups in different countries and much more but that is all irrelevant when considering the question whether there is something like an average IQ score grouped by country. Those scores exist and the results from several independent studies are largely the same.
- akerl_ 3mo agoYour original link makes fairly clear how disingenuous it is to call the figures a national average: > Data from International IQ Test (IIT) are based on data from 1,352,763 participants worldwide who took the same IQ test on the website. > Becker’s estimates are categorized by source. T = value is based upon actual test results from said country. E = value is a best-guess estimate based upon measured values of nearby countries. Opening up the actual paper from Becker they're citing is basically a wandering tour where they try to find whatever numbers do exist and then math their way out of the fact that the sample sizes are small and the tests are different everywhere. Various entities have performed IQ tests on people in many nations. But taking that and trying to flip it to say we've derived average national IQ is junk science.
- hagbard_c 3mo agoIf you don't like that link - which is just one of the many I got when searching for 'national IQ average' there are many other similar studies to be had. Here's a few of them, again just some results from the first page in my SearXNG instance. The results are not identical but they are comparable. https://international-iq-test.com/en/test/IQ_by_country https://international-iq-test.com/en/test/IQ_by_country https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php https://www.universaliqtest.com/statistics/average-iq-by-country https://www.universaliqtest.com/statistics/average-iq-by-cou... https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/average-iq-by-country https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/average-iq-by-country https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229401257_National_IQs_calculated_and_validated_for_108_nations https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229401257_National_... https://openpsych.net/files/papers/Parra_2025a.pdf https://openpsych.net/files/papers/Parra_2025a.pdf
- akerl_ 3mo ago> Countries with fewer than 100 test-takers were excluded from the ranking due to limited sample size and are shown in gray on the map above. How generous of them.
- tptacek 3mo agoYou've just provided: (1) Several surveys backed by anonymous online "IQ test" web sites. (2) Richard Lynn, whose numbers are essentially fraudulent. (3) Emil Kirkegaard, the famous Danish white supremacist. The counterargument is very simple: countries don't generally do IQ surveys. Most people on HN have never been asked to take a calibrated IQ test. The data simply doesn't exist.
- akerl_ 3mo agoDon’t worry, they got data from a whole 5000 people in Australia and 300 people in Afghanistan! I’m sure that’s generalizable to the whole country’s worth of 28 and 40 million, respectively.
- tptacek 3mo agoHard to beat Richard Lynn's sample of Senegal, which came from 57 children in a malaria hospital.