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
  childs 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
  individuals 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 childs 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.