Validity & Reliability of IQ Tests
IQ tests have evaluated children's intelligence and their potential for learning since the early 1900s. In today's education system, IQ tests help to determine whether a child has a significant learning or cognitive disability as well as to predict learning ability. Some educational scientists question, however, whether IQ tests are really valid or reliable instruments of evaluation. Critics assail the IQ tests as culturally biased and containing inaccurately written questions; in addition, they maintain, the circumstances under which a child takes a test can influence her IQ score.
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History of IQ tests
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IQ testing began in 1904 when the French government hired Alfred Binet to find a method of determining which children would have serious learning difficulties requiring them to be placed in a separate school. Binet created a series of tests in which children were asked to perform tasks such as following directions. He then created a scale to interpret results, based upon the percentage of children of a particular age who were able to complete the tasks.
Binet did not believe that low IQ meant a child could not learn; his test was designed to identify children who needed special help to learn. However, American scientists Lewis Terman and H.H. Goddard revised this test in 1916 to test intelligence itself. Both of these men believed that intelligence was an inborn, hereditary quality. Terman, Goddard and other scientists of the era working on IQ testing were believers in eugenics, a philosophy that advocated mating people with "desirable" genes to eliminate undesirable attributes from the human race.
IQ testing and racism
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Early IQ testing in America led to extremely restrictive immigration laws. Terman's test was given only in English; immigrants who had not lived in America long or didn't speak English tended to score low. Terman successfully lobbied for laws deporting these people because of their "inferior" IQ.
In 1994, social scientists Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein wrote a controversial book, "The Bell Curve," that examined student test scores. African-American IQ scores were far lower than those of white students, leading the authors to dismiss black students as genetically predisposed to lower intelligence.
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IQ testing and cultural bias
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Cultural bias refers to the idea that test questions are inherently biased against people who come from a culture other than the one the test writer comes from. Wilderdom.com, a website devoted to "living in conjunction with nature," insists that some cultural bias is impossible to avoid.
Cultural bias can cause children from a different racial, religious, or socio-economic background to do poorly on IQ tests. Questions may ask children to name objects that are "common knowledge" in one culture but not in another, such as types of mailboxes more likely to be found in the country than the city or vice versa.
IQ tests and reliability
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The Ohio Proficiency Test Information, Sources and Movements---an organization that monitors the state's standardized school testing---says a test is reliable only if it consistently gives the same results. By that standard, IQ tests would not be reliable if students got drastically different scores on different days.
Learninginfo.org, which focuses on learning disabilities, says IQ scores can change by as much as 15 points when a child is retested. "Psychology," a textbook written by Douglas Bernstein and other social psychologists, calls IQ testing unreliable for children under 7.
Importance of IQ test validity and reliability
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In a 2002 report, the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education declared IQ tests too large a component of special education evaluation and placement. Children who score low on these tests may be placed in special classes or labeled as intellectually disabled. The commission, created by President George W. Bush in 2001, argued that inaccurate IQ tests could place children under 7 inappropriately.
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References
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