Group Tests and Controversies in Ability Testing

1. Group Tests and Controversies in Ability Testing Test Bias and Other Controversies

2. Misconceptions about IQ • The faith that each person possesses a fixed IQ often is found among individuals who idolize cognitive tests and who, typically, have earned top scores on intelligence tests. • Another misconception is that IQ is a measure of person worth.

3. Misconceptions about IQ • Another misconception is that IQ is an all encompassing index of diverse intellectual abilities. • Yet another misconception is the belief that IQ scores remain stable from children into maturity. It has been known that intelligence as measured by IQ can shift upward or downward in the normal course of life, depending on education, experience, motivation, and a host of other factors.

4. The Question of Test Bias • Intelligence tests are sadly misnamed because they were never intended to measure intelligence and might have been more aptly called CB (cultural background) tests. • Persons from backgrounds other than the culture in which the test was developed will always be penalized.

5. The Question of Test Bias • There are enormous social class differences in a child’s access to the experiences necessary to acquire the valid intellectual skills. • IQ scores reported for African American and low socioeconomic groups in the United States reflect characteristics of the test rather than of the test takers.

6. The Question of Test Bias • The poor performance of African American children on conventional tests is due to the biased content of the tests; that is, the test material is drawn from outside the African American culture. • Women are not so good as men at mathematics only because women have not taken as much math in high school and college.

7. The Test-Bias Controversy • One possibility is that the observed IQ disparities indicate test bias rather than meaningful group differences. • Racial and ethnic differences are not the only foundation for the test-bias controversy. Significant gender differences also exist on some ability measures, most particularly in the area of spatial thinking.

8. Criteria of Test Bias and Test Fairness • Test bias refers to objective statistical indices that examine the patterning of test scores for relevant subpopulations. • In contrast to the narrow concept of test bias, test fairness is a broad concept that recognizes the importance of social values in test usage.

9. Criteria of Test Bias and Test Fairness • The crux of the debate is this: Test bias (a statistical concept) is not necessarily the same thing as test fairness (a value concept).

10. The Technical Meaning of Test Bias: A Definition • One useful way to examine test bias is from the technical perspective of test validation. A test is valid when a variety of evidence supports its utility and when inferences derived from it are appropriate, meaningful, and useful. One implication of this viewpoint is that test bias can be equated with differential validity for different groups.

11. The Technical Meaning of Test Bias: A Definition • Although the general definition of test bias refers to differential validity, in practice the particular criteria of test bias fall under three main headings: content validity, criterion-related validity, and construct validity. • Bias in Content Validity • Bias in Predictive or Criterion-Related Validity • Bias in Construct Validity

12. Bias in Content Validity • Bias in content validity is probably the most common criticism of those who denounce the use of standardized tests with minorities. • Typically, critics rely on their own expert judgment when they expound one or more of the following criticisms of the content validity of ability tests:

13. Bias in Content Validity • The items ask for information that ethnic minority or disadvantaged persons have not ha equal opportunity to learn. • The scoring of the items is improper, since the test author has arbitrarily decided on the only correct answer and ethnic minorities are inappropriately penalized for giving answers that would be correct in their on culture but not that of the test maker.

14. Bias in Content Validity • The wording of the questions is unfamiliar, and an ethnic minority person who may “know” the correct answer may not be able to respond because he or she does not understand the question.

15. Bias in Predictive or Criterion-Related Validity • In general, an unbiased test ill predict future performance equally well for persons from different subpopulations. • Figure6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 6.10.

16. Bias in Construct Validity • The construct validity of a psychological test can be documented by diverse forms of evidence, including appropriate developmental patterns in test scores, theory-consistent intervention changes in test scores and confirmatory factor analysis.

17. Bias in Construct Validity • Bias exists in regard to construct validity when a test is shown to measure different hypothetical traits (psychological constructs) for one group than for another; that is, differing interpretations of a common performance are shown to be appropriate as a function of ethnicity, gender, or another variable of interest.

18. Bias in Construct Validity • If a test is nonbiased, then comparisons across relevant subpopulations should reveal a high degree of similarity for (1) the factorial structure of the test, and (2) the rank order of item difficulties within the test.

19. Social values and Test Fairness • In contrast to the narrow, objective notion of test bias, the concept of test fairness incorporates social values and philosophies of test use. • Three positions in institutional selection procedures: unqualified individualism, Quotas, qualified individualism.

20. Social values and Test Fairness • Unqualified individualism dictates that, without exception, the best qualified candidates should be selected for employment, admission, or other privilege. • This means that an organization should use whatever information it possesses to make a scientifically valid prediction of each individual’s performance and always select those with the highest predicted performance.

21. Social values and Test Fairness • Quotas • The ethical stance of quotas acknowledges that many bureaucracies and educational institutions owe their very existence to the city or state in which they function. For example, in a location whose population is one-third African American and two-thirds white, selection procedures should admit candidates in approximate the same ratio. A selection procedure that deviates consistently from this standard would be considered unfair.

22. Social values and Test Fairness • qualified individualism • This position notes that America is constitutionally opposed to discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sex. A qualified individualist interprets this as an ethical imperative to refuse to use race, sex, and so on, as a predictor even if it were in fact scientifically valid to do so.

23. Genetic and Environmental Determinants of Intelligence • Genetic Contribution to Intelligence: • Honzik (1957): Figure 6.11 (p.279) • The results indicated that the intelligence of adoptive children parallels the intelligence of the biological parents, but showed no relationship to the intelligence of the adoptive parents.

24. Genetic and Environmental Determinants of Intelligence • Environmental Effects: Impoverishment and Enrichment • 1. Interventions that begin earlier (e.g., during infancy) and continue longer provide the best benefits to participating children. • 2. More-intensive interventions (e.g., number of visits per week) produce larger positive effects than less-intensive interventions. • 3. Direct enrichment experiences (e.g., working directly with the kids) provide greater impact than indirect experiences. • 4. Programs with comprehensive service (e.g., multiple enhancements) produce greater positive changes than those with a narrow focus.

25. Genetic and Environmental Determinants of Intelligence • 5. Some children (e.g., those with normal birth weight) show greater benefits from participation than other children. • 6. Initial positive benefits diminish over time if the child’s environment does not encourage positive attitudes and continued learning.

26. Genetic and Environmental Determinants of Intelligence • Teratogenic effects on intelligence and development: e.g., fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) • Effects of environmental toxins on intelligence: • Many industrial chemicals and by-products may impair the nervous system temporarily, or even cause permanent damage that affects intelligence.

27. Age Changes In Intelligence • Early cross-sectional research • Sequential studies of intelligence • Age and Fluid/Crystallized distinction • Postformal operations in adulthood and old age

28. Early cross-sectional research • It has been recognized for quite some time that cross-sectional studies often confound age effects with educational disparities or other age-group differences. • In all likelihood, the lower scores of the older subjects are caused, in part, by these educational differences rather than signifying an inexorable age-related decline.

29. Sequential studies of intelligence • Even holding age constant, those born and tested most recently performed better than those born and tested at an earlier time. • The longitudinal comparison showed a tendency for mean scores either to rise slightly or to remain constant until approximately age 60 or 70.

30. Age and Fluid/Crystallized distinction • A significant age-related decrement in fluid intelligence because of its reliance upon neural integrity, which is presumed to decline with advancing age.

31. Postformal operations in adulthood and old age • Piaget proposed an influential stage theory of intelligence that posited four epochs of intellectual development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. • The post-Piagetian theorists question an excessive reliance on formal operational thought, which tends to be unsuited to the fuzzy, dynamic, conditional, and unstructured problems encountered in everyday life.

32. Postformal operations in adulthood and old age • Postformal thinking has the following general characteristics: • 1. A recognition that knowledge is relative and temporary, not absolute and universal. • 2. The acceptance of contradiction as a basic aspect of reality. • 3.The ability to synthesize contradictory thoughts, emotions, an experiences into more coherent wholes. • 4. An emphasis on the practical aspects of intelligence and knowledge.

33. Generational Changes In Intelligence Test Scores • We might expect that any differences would be small. After all, the human gene pool has remained essentially constant for centuries, perhaps millennia. Thus, common sense dictates that any generational changes in population intelligence would be minimal. • On this issue, common sense appears to be incorrect. Table 6.6

34. Generational Changes In Intelligence Test Scores • IQ gains over time make it imperative to restandardize tests frequently, otherwise examinees are being scored with obsolete norms and will receive inflated IQ scores.