Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!news.cs.indiana.edu!caen!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: marie%singsing.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.berkeley.EDU (Marie desJardins) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: IQ tests (Was Re: sexist space) Message-ID: <10468@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 28 Jan 91 17:38:42 GMT References: <91022.185956RMG3@psuvm.psu.edu> <11119@helios.TAMU.EDU> Reply-To: Marie desJardins Lines: 26 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: blanche.ics.uci.edu In article <1991Jan18.174824.21081@odin.corp.sgi.com> milt%odin.corp.sgi.com@sgi.COM (Milton Tinkoff) writes: > >I've _heard_ of this but I'm a bit confused. Exactly how is an IQ >test racially biased? I thought typical questions were of the "What >is the next number in this sequence?" or "Square is to circle as cube >is to ?" variety. Show me some racially biased questions and then >I'll start believing. I recently saw some IQ tests that had a number of questions where you were supposed to unscramble five sets of letters, and indicate which of them did not belong to a particular group. A lot of these questions relied on knowledge one would learn in school or in "common" (middle-class white) experience, e.g. European cities (some of which I had never heard of!), automobile makes, etc. These are certainly biased in the sense that they measure acquired, not innate knowledge, and that the acquired knowledge measured is more likely to be known by certain groups (in some cases males, in some cases well-educated or well-travelled people---usually whites). These were fairly old tests (late '60's, maybe), but I imagine similar questions are still found on current tests (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they still use the same tests!) Marie desJardins marie@singsing.berkeley.edu