Iq Tests And The Iq Test Essay

When one speaks of intelligence or how bright another person is, the often quoted figure is the IQ or intelligence quotient. It is the most often used standard of how smart a person is. This paper shall look at what intelligence tests measure, how the IQ tests measure intelligence and interrogate their history. It shall then apply the tests to school policy and hence evaluate their validity.

A further refinement of the Stanford-Binet scale and translation (for American culture) was published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman, who adopted Stern’s proposal that an individual's intelligence level be measured as an intelligence quotient (I. Q.). The IQ score presumably represented an individual’s rate of mental development as a quotient, between "mental age" and actual "chronological age" times 100 (to remove the decimal). Terman's test, known colloquially as the Stanford-Binet test, formed the basis for modern intelligence

In this paper I discuss the creation, distribution, and results of a psychological test. The test consisted of knowledge and self-report sections, which tested the construct of “The AZA and Zoos”. According to their website, The Association of Zoos and aquariums (AZA), is an independent, non-profit organization that grants an optional accreditation to zoos, aquariums, and wildlife sanctuaries. Institutions that meet their strict standards for animal welfare and care after a series of inspections and interviews are granted a five-year accreditation. In addition to their standards for animal care, they are also invested in conservation of species, and education of the general public (AZA, 2016). The knowledge portion evaluated general knowledge of the AZA policies and procedures, while the self-report evaluated overall opinion on Zoos. An example item for the knowledge portion was item three “An AZA accreditation is not necessary to operate a zoo “. An example item for the self-report portion was item 32 “I think zoos are a positive enrichment activity for children “. The intended survey population for this survey was the general population.

Gottfredson, (1997) stated that intelligence is ‘a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.

Verbal score: represented scores on subtests of vocabulary, comprehension, knowledge of general information and other verbal tasks

In 1845 educational pioneer Horace Mann had an idea. Rather than administering annual oral exams, he suggested that Boston Public School students prove their knowledge through written exams (Gershon, 2015). According to Gallagher (2003), Mann's goal was to find and replicate the best teaching practices so that all students could receive an equal education. Unlike Mann's exam, many of the first widely adopted standardized school tests were designed to measure ability rather than achievement. Intelligence tests, and similar assessments that became popular in the early twentieth century, had a quality of scientific objectivity. The Army Alpha and Beta Tests, developed during World War I to group soldiers by their mental abilities, became a model for the schools (Gershon, 2015).

Testing has been used for centuries in many different ways, not just to test student intelligence levels. According to an article written in Time, the earliest form of a standardized test comes from China where government leaders would be tested on their knowledge of Confucius and poetry. The article continues with the inclusion of testing during the Industrial Revolution. The testing during this period took children who were not in school and measured their knowledge of subjects that students in schools learned. As time went on, more and more advances came to the testing scene. New products included a revised version of the test, called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test, and professionals developed the test scanner by 1936. These inventions improved the time necessary to receive results from an IQ test. Today, tests, like the

Binet was involved in creating one of the more recent forms of intelligence test, referred to as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. A similar test is that formulated by Wechsler (Neisser et al. 1996). These led to the measure of IQ (“intelligence quotient”) being founded, where an individual’s “mental age is divided by their chronological age and multiplied by 100” (Gardner 2006, p. 3). The tests measure intelligence through verbal and non-verbal tasks, assessing scholastic aptitude, school achievement and specific abilities (Neisser et al. 1996, p. 78).

In the early 1900s, IQ test was originally developed by the French psychologist, Alfred Binet.

In 1904, a French psychologist (Alfred Binet) created the first intelligence test in order to help the French Ministry of Education segregate children that may have difficulty learning in a regular classroom. At that time, he did not know that his test would be the basis for IQ tests administered over 100 years later. He has a Stanford University psychologist, Lewis Terman, to thank for expanding his work and creating the Stanford-Binet intelligence test that took root in the United States in 1916 and is still popular today. However, along with its popularity came criticism. Critics see the current version of the Stanford - Binet test and other intelligence tests, despite attempts to make them culturally fair, as limiting to individuals who are not from the major social norm. They claim that cultural bias in test questions is why certain races do not perform as well as others on the test.

In 1905 Binet and Simon tested their measurements on another fifty children whom their school teachers considered to be of average intelligence for their ages. This test was to enable Binet to examine the levels of intelligent behaviors between children of the same age. Some of the tests on Binets scale were very simple, including asking a child to follow the direction of movement of a lighted match, and then maybe slightly harder was to repeat back a three digit sequence of numbers or sentences. There were a few harder tests involved which would require a child to make a sentence out of maybe three or four words, or to reproduce a drawing from memory.

His concept involved the idea that certain mental tasks are appropriate to certain ages, such as the ability to recite the names of the months: while expected of a ten year old, such ability would be rare in a three year old. Binet quantified intelligence as the Intelligence Quotient (IQ): the ratio of mental age to chronological age, multiplied by 100. Reasoning that low intelligence stemmed from improper development, Binet envisioned the test as a first step in treatment: a diagnostic instrument used to detect children with inadequate intelligence in order to treat them using "mental orthopedics."

Before the 1950s, most educators and school systems tended to follow Louis Terman’s example and based most decisions about gifted individuals on IQ and scholastic achievement scores. Standardized group intelligence tests, such as California Test of Mental Maturity, were often used to determine IQ. In these tests, educators were looking for exceptional ability in verbal or performance IQ, or a combination of the two. For the final identification, individual IQ tests such as the Wechsler scales and the Stanford Binet were used. Most school systems around this time considered an IQ of 130 or above to fall in the "gifted" range. This information comes from a book by Frederick B. Tuttle, Laurence A. Becker, and Joan A. Sousa (48).

For decades, a lot emphasis has been put on certain aspect of intelligence. This intelligence is called IQ ( Intelligence Quotient ). IQ includes aspects of Mathematics, spatial learning, Verbal, logical reasoning, and memory. This intelligence could predict to a significant degree of performances and some degree of personal and professional success. However, some people with fabulous IQ scores are doing poorly in their life. They somehow are wasting their potential by thinking, behaving and communication in a way that hinders their chances to succeed. There is something missing in the success equation. The missing part in the success equation is EQ or EIQ ( Emotional Intelligence Quotient ).

When a person utters the word “intelligence,” people tend to think of a genius like Albert Einstein developing some obscure equation that the great majority of the population will never understand. The problem with the definition of intelligence is that people relate intelligence to words like “genius” which require intelligence but do not have the same definition as intelligence. Often, people try to use related words to define intelligence, but these words are unable to define intelligence since many are only different levels of intelligence. While many definitions try to encompass the meaning of intelligence and various definitions describe a small part of intelligence, no definition completely explains intelligence, because