IQ Test Biases VS IQ Test FairnessThe reality lies in between... The IQ (intelligence quotient) is a score resulting from any of the psychometric IQ tools claiming to measure your intelligence. These tools are employed as predictors of academic and professional achievements. IQ scores are used by the psychologists for studying the future prospectus of candidates in a given job or training program. When a Score Sticks to Your Name...
The IQ scores can help the employers to have a optimum profile of the candidate when he was taking the IQ test. However, the concepts of the intelligence are not refined yet. The IQ tests are revised every couple of years to keep maximum number of people in the average one. The people scoring near to genius in 1970s would stand average on today’s IQ testing scales. However, the IQ tests still claim neutrality. The problem rises when someone attaches meanings to the IQ test scores and sticks those meanings to your person. You can visualize the repercussions which can be fair, unfair, help or harmful depending upon the meanings attached to the scores. Unfortunately, the tendency is growing up on the internet. A few days before I was visiting a forum where one page of this site was quoted to claim that Scotts are idiots. I have never claimed so but the person had attached such meanings to the IQ scores that I had never meant for. IQ Test Biases in Score InterpretationsThe IQ of a person describes his state of mind and his way of logical thinking at the moment of testing session. Though too much difference may not occur but environment, purpose and administration styles still can affect your scores.Some people score higher IQ and they consider themselves superior to others. But you can find many of them failing in the real life. This phenomenon gives rise to a hot debate whether IQ is reliable source of judging a personality. The opponents rightly point out other elements required for success. Others opine that IQ tests are valid though interpretation may be wrong. The IQ test results are often over-interpreted or under-interpreted for one reason or the other. Further elaborations of these interpretations provide extra support to some people while devaluing the others. IQ Test Biases Given By JensenMr. Jensen (1980) has claimed that IQ tests are biased for one reason or the other. He has given a number of biases of the IQ tests: 1- The IQ tests are wrongly named as intelligence tests. They were never intended to measure your intelligence. However, they should be called CB (cultural background) tests because they measure your mental alertness as your culture teaches you. 2- The testing companies build test in particular society and cultural backgrounds. However, when these tests are applied on the population worldwide (as on internet) the people from other societies shall be penalized. 3- You learn thing from your childhood by experiencing things. However, there are enormous social class differences in a child’s access to the experience necessary to acquire the valid intellectual skills. So people living in the same society within different classes will face the same IQ test with different skills and experiences. 4- IQ scores reported for the black Americans and low socio economic groups in the USA reflect characteristics of the test rather than of the test takers. 5- The tests designed on the white population are biased for the black population and low income groups. Such IQ tests have biased content because the test material is taken from the outside of the African American culture. 6- Women don’t take too much math in High schools. However, the IQ test biases report that the women have low intelligence in math. It is like putting a test of English language to the students who have never read English as a language. Such kind of criticism may not be fair but can attract public attention very easily. The reality is that the IQ test scores can only be understood within the framework of the modern psychology. Many psychologists have claimed that such criticism is too harsh. The fact that items look preferential to a race, people, population or society does not have too much weight. It is interesting but alarming to the critics that IQ test biases may be investigated with objective methods. Some psychologists have criticized skeptics’ claims. They say that IQ test biases and IQ test fairness are two different things. It is not merely difference of terminology but also of the meanings and conceptions. IQ Test biases are amenable to impartial analysis. However, test fairness is different from IQ test biases as they reflect social values and philosophies of test use. Much of the debate of IQ test biases revolves around confusion of the issue with test fairness. The arguing parties fail to distinguish between two different concepts.
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