Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!cos!smith
From: smith@cos.com (Steve Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Bias on IQ tests
Message-ID: <1222@cos.com>
Date: 24 Mar 88 19:34:49 GMT
References: <153reneerb@byuvax.bitnet> <20779@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <3933@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <3943@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: smith@cos.UUCP (Steve Smith)
Organization: Corporation for Open Systems, McLean, VA
Lines: 32

In article <3943@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth A. Gordon) writes:

> ...  Middle- and upper-class people are
>simply more exposed, in their culture, to the sort of things the tests
>ask about than lower-class people are.

>When a draft of the Stanford-Binet (I think) IQ test was tested, it was
>discovered that women tended to score *higher* than men on it.

>The designers of the test *removed* some of the questions that women
>tended to score better on, so that men and women would average the same
>score.


In this light, I remember reading somewhere that two of the criteria for
an intelligence test are:

1.  Men and women must have the same average scores.

2.  High status people must have a higher average score than low status
    people.

In other words, if the scores don't come out like this, the test "isn't
valid".  This could explain a whole bunch about the way the scores tend
to come out.

Any IQ test gurus out there to confirm or deny?

-- 
                -- Steve
(smith@cos.com)    ({uunet sundc decuac hqda-ai hadron}!cos!smith)
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."