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From: chabot@amber.DEC (Lisa Chabot)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: tests and ability
Message-ID: <495@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-May-84 23:30:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.495
Posted: Wed May 23 23:30:07 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 26-May-84 12:54:27 EDT
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 61

I quote a statement from Mr. Hughes:
> Path: decwrl!decvax!hoopoe!aliases!burl!cloud!watmath!csc
> Subject: Re: Tests and Prediction
> Posted: Sun May 20 10:54:59 1984
> 
> One often hears the statements "Tests can only measure the ability to take
> tests" and "Tests can only predict the ability to take tests".  The first
> is tautological (in terms of the TQ analogy, A test of Tallness can only
> measure a persons tallness) the second is simply false. 

This is an incorrect fitting to the "TQ analogy".  A correct interpretation 
would be

	A test of Tallness can only measure a person's ability to take tallness
	tests.

In this correct fitting to the "TQ analogy", it is readily apparent that
this is not a tautology.

Those who cannot recognize the difference perhaps are deficient in abstract
reasoning, but this may be due to environmental factors such as the lack
of good practice in verbal reasoning in many engineering environments, rather
than any innate lack.

To assist in visualization about the difference between "a person's ability to 
take tallness tests" and "a person's tallness", consider the following: we wish
to test a sufficient number of male and female subjects but our subjects come
from a country or societal structure in which women are not allowed out of
the home to protect them from interactions with men not of their household , or
in which women are merely wary of such interactions.  We, the researchers
may either be ignorant of such a wariness or unable to overcome any such 
prohibition if we are not welcome into potential samples' homes for reasons of
the male researchers among us not being welcome or our Western taint not 
being welcome.  In this situation, we may not be able to reach the same 
variety of women that we can of men, certainly any women who approached us and 
we were able to measure might be suspected of being abnormal, at least by the 
standards of their society and their freedom to approach might result from 
some tolerance because of a physical feature decided by their society to be a
defect.

Being unaware of the outlying factors determining what sample we pick can
grossly distort our research.  There was a study done on (I believe) Norwegian
women which became the basis for the widely held belief that women used to
reach menarche at age 18; this contrasted with what we see around us today to
be the more common age of 13 led many to wonder or fear just what was happening
to the human race, and if this was perhaps some sign of moral decay, or 
mutation, or a result of overcrowding.  But it was simply this: the women 
studied were starving women, and it has since been shown that the onset of 
menstruation is delayed if a woman's proportion of fat in body weight 
is too low.


Statements of the form "Tests can only measure/predict an ability to take 
tests" are perhaps incorrect after all in that the "only" is too restrictive.
"Tests measure/predict the ability to take tests" is more correct.
"Tests measure the researchers' ability to design tests" is most correct.

				  --Lisa S. Chabot

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