Culture and Bias

1
Culture and Bias

• From Kamphaus. R.W. Clinical Assessment of
  Child and Adolescent Intelligence (2nd. Ed.)

2
Guiding Questions

• Why did intelligence tests come under attack in
  the 1970s and 1980s?
• What were the outcomes of litigation related to
  intelligence tests?
• How has the question of bias in intelligence
  tests been addressed?
• Should we consider todays intelligence tests to
  be potentially culturally biased?
• How should you assess the intelligence of a
  non-English speaking child or adult?

3
Concerns about intelligence tests

• Developed primarily by white males from European
  and North American countries
• Years of research has consistently shown IQ
  scores to be lower for non-white groups,
  particularly African Americans
• Intelligence tests are integral to the special
  education placement process the use of the
  tests has been questioned
• In particular, diagnosis of mental retardation
  came under fierce attack

4
Ethnic Differences in IQ

• Overall findings
• Caucasians and African Americans have been
  studied the most
• Remember that just because differences exist
  between groups does not in itself mean that the
  test is biased against the group scoring lower on
  the test

5
Court Cases

• Hobson vs. Hanson (1967)
• Focused on group-administered tests
• Tracking system Disproportionate number of
  Black children in lowest educational tracks,
  based on standardized tests
• Were these tests true measures of ability?
• Were the lower tracks an educational wasteland?
• Tracking system overturned

6
Diana v. State Bd. Of Educ. (1970)

• Class action suit filed on behalf of nine Latino
  children
• Placed in EMR classes based on individually-admini
  stered IQ test
• Later retesting with Hispanic examiner 8 of 9
  not EMR
• Resulted in consent decree
• More than 1 test
• 2 SDs below mean adaptive
• Test in native language
• Periodic re-evaluation
• Must meet the validity test
• Had big impact on 94-142

7
Larry P. v. Riles (1971-1979)

• Class action suit in San Francisco, CA
• Class action suit for minority children who were
  overrepresented in EMR classes
• Asked that IQ tests be banned in SF schools
• This was granted in 1971
• Actual trial took place in 1977-78

8
Larry P. v. Riles (1971-1979)

• Many famous psychologists testified for both
  sides
• Dr. Robert Williams and the BITCH
• Dr. Jane Mercer questioned predictive validity of
  WISC for minority kids (SOMPA)
• Dr. Nadine Lambert suggested that
  overrepresentation was due to teachers
• Tremendously complicated case with thousands of
  pages of testimony

9
Larry P. v. Riles (1971-1979)

• October 1979 Judge Robert Peckham ruled that
  standardized intelligence tests are racially and
  culturally biased, have a discriminatory impact
  against black children, and have not been
  validated for the purpose of essentially
  permanent placements of black children into
  educationally dead-end, isolated, and
  stigmatizing classes for the so-called educable
  mentally retarded.

10
Larry P. v. Riles (1971-1979)

• January 1984 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld
  Peckhams ruling (2-1). The dissenting judge
  offering quite compelling reasons for the use of
  IQ tests
• June 1986 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued
  an amended decision that reaffirmed the lower
  courts finding of violation of federal statutory
  law, but reversed the findings of violation of
  the equal protection clause of the 14th Amend.

11
Larry P. v. Riles (1971-1979)

• September 1986 CA State Dept. of Ed issued
  directive to ban IQ tests with Black children who
  were referred for special education
• September 1992 The same court reversed its 1986
  amended decision in Crawford et. Al. v. Honig et.
  al. Now the court ruled that the parents of
  African American children have the same rights as
  all other parents to obtain IQ assessments for
  their children who are in or being considered for
  special education services (LD). However, EMR
  assessment is still no.

12
PASE v. Joseph P. Hannon

• Parents in Action on Special Education
• Came to the opposite conclusion of the Larry P.
  case individual IQ tests are not biased
• Most of students in this case were Latino
• Much different time period by this time, most
  of the Chicago Public Schools were minority group
  members, as were the vast majority of the
  students
• Judge Grady and the fight item

13
Effects of the Court Decisions

• New tests are much more rigorous about checking
  for item bias before publication
• EMR placements are much lower for minority group
  children, not only because of scrutiny of the
  tests, but also because the effectiveness of
  special education itself has been questioned
• New assessment measures and approaches have also
  appeared SOMPA, LPAD, nonverbal tests like the
  UNIT

14
Scientific Studies of Bias

• Culturally- loaded biased fair free
• Test bias refers to systematic error in the
  estimation of some true value for a group of
  individuals. The key is systemic all
  measures have error, but it is assumed usually to
  be random
• Do mean score differences necessarily imply bias?

15
3 Potential Sources of Bias

• Content validity bias
• Construct validity bias
• Predictive validity bias

16
1. Content Validity Bias

• This occurs when an item or subscale of the test
  is relatively more difficult for members of one
  group than for members of another group, even
  though general ability of the two groups is
  similar
• Match subjects for overall ability and then look
  for significant differences in difficulty for
  certain items
• Can also use panels of reviewers
• E.g. from K-ABC
• There is a little bias in todays tests, but not
  much and not systematic

17
2. Construct Validity Bias

• This kind of bias exists when a test is shown to
  measure different hypothetical traits
  (constructs) for one group versus another
• Factor analysis has been used to investigate
  construct validity
• Findings A great deal of similarity in factor
  structure across all groups

18
3. Predictive validity bias

• Here we look at the predictive power of IQ tests
  across different groups
• Most of these investigations have looked at
  prediction academic success/failure in school
• WISC seems to predict school achievement equally
  well for Caucasian, African American, and
  Hispanic kids

19
Challenges in assessing multilingual children

• Certain practices have been suggested but have
  problems
• Use a translation of a popular IQ test
• Use a nonverbal test
• Take an English-language test and administer it
  via a translator
• All of these approaches have problems
• Best solution is to have the client tested by a
  psychologist who speaks the clients language