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From: chabot@amber.DEC (Lisa Chabot)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: "preformance" and IQ tests
Message-ID: <497@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Jun-84 00:06:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.497
Posted: Wed Jun  6 00:06:44 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 26-May-84 12:54:42 EDT
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 51

The following quotes are from the letter from Mr. Hughes with the following 
heading:
> Subject: Re: Tests and Prediction
> Posted: Sun May 20 10:54:59 1984

> Take the much abused I.Q.  It is not a very good predictor of individual
> preformance but it is not a bad predictor of group preformance. 

The reason the IQ test is "much abused" is that it has been shown in a number
of studies to be heavily culturally-dependent: there are questions dealing 
with situations unknown to inner-city-raised children, and questions phrased
in a vocabulary unpracticed by the same type of children.

The choice of spelling the word "performance" as instead "preformance" is 
rather an amusing pun: the "pre" instead of the correct "per" leads to 
envisioning the IQ test as measuring how much the children have been preformed,
or how much they've been shaped before the test, molded by their own milieu.
It is amusing in that it is not something Mr. Hughes probably meant to 
communicate; we can guess this by his evident faith in IQ tests.

> Tests are only useful if they are correlated to some property we are
> interested in. 
...
> If the correlation is strong they become useful predictors.  If the 
> correlation is VERY (and I mean VERY) strong they become useful predictors 
> of individual preformance.

Unfortunately for the researcher, the results of the test may correlate more
closely with some property with which the researcher doesn't see or doesn't 
really want to measure.

>(I don't care how well you can write I.Q. tests, I do
> care whether you will do well in university).  

There is a big difference between an ability to do well on IQ tests, and
an ability to write IQ tests, and the former does not imply the latter.
We never intended to imply the latter from the former.

IQ tests can indicate an ability to assimilate white culture, and a good
assimilation is very likely necessary to do well in a university.
IQ retest scores that are higher than the original may reflect an
acquired ease with taking IQ tests or a better assimilation.  SAT scores,
long considered a good predictor of college performance have been shown
by independent studies (independent especially of the corporation that 
markets them and administers the tests) to be dependent on preparation for
the tests.

				  --Lisa S. Chabot

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