When it comes to testing for intelligence one needs to understand that intelligence can vary according to the types of tests that are given and with environmental factors. They Flynn effect is a case in point for this occurrence. I have a big frustration when it comes to standardized testing. Many different countries around the world use testing for diagnostic purposes so that they can track and tailor the course of schooling for the students for their future chosen career choice. In the United States there is this erroneous belief that we need to prepare all students for a collegiate track. Because of this many students take out unbelievable amounts of student loan dept to pay for higher education, and yet when they finish their schooling they have difficulty finding a job with their chosen degree. In fact, because of this problem many continue education to get a masters or beyond level of schooling, and yet, they are still unable to find employment. In fact, we have so many various types of degrees that one can get in any university because of this unchecked system. I do believe that the system takes advantage of the budding youth and their idealistic dreams and we encourage this because there is money to be made from it. But the fact of the matter is that one should go to college for the purpose of finding employment when one is finished. I think there has become an education bubble just as there has developed the housing bubble and sooner or later it will reach critical capacity. There are too many college graduates that come out of college with $150,000 or more in dept but yet cannot find a job and end up living at home while they work a menial job to pay off their college loans. And neither can one go into bankruptcy due to student loans. This is a travesty perpetrated at the expense of the youth of our nation.
Here are a view additional resources and some specific information on testing for intelligences that I found in my research from my Alma mater Shippensburg University. I remember learning this information in my undergraduate schooling:
Multiple Forms of Intelligence
Gardner's Theory. A relatively new approach is the theory of "multiple intelligences"; proposed by Howard Gardner (1983). On this view conceptions of intelligence should be informed not only by work with normal children and adults but also by studies of gifted individuals (including so-called 'savants"), of persons who have suffered brain damage, of experts and virtuosos, and of individuals from diverse cultures. These considerations have led Gardner to include musical, bodlily-kinesthetic, and various forms of personal intelligence as well as more familiar spatial, linguistic, and logical mathematical abilities in the scope of his theory. He argues that psychometric tests address only linguistic and logical plus some aspects of spatial intelligence; other forms have been entirely ignored. Moreover, the paper and-pencil format of most tests rules out many kinds of intelligent performance that matter in everyday life, such as giving an extemporaneous talk (linguistic) or being able to find one's way in a new town (spatial). While Gardner's arguments have attracted considerable interest, the stability and validity of performance tests in these new domains has yet to be conclusively demonstrated. It is also possible to doubt whether some of these abilities-bodily-kinesthetic," for example--are appropriately described as forms of intelligence rather than as special talents.
Sternberg's Theory. Robert Sternberg's (1985) triarchic theory proposes three fundamental aspects of intelligence-analytic, creative, and practical--of which only the first is measured to any significant extent by mainstream tests. His investigations suggest the need for a balance between analytic intelligence, on the one hand, and creative and especially practical intelligence on the other. The distinction between analytic (or "academic") and practical intelligence has also been made by others (e.g., Neisser, 1976). Analytic problems, of the type suitable for test construction, tend to (a) have been formulated by other people, (b) be clearly defined, (c) come with all the information needed to solve them, (d) have only a single right answer, which can be reached by only a single method, (e) be disembodied from ordinary experience, and (f) have little or no intrinsic interest. Practical problems, in contrast, tend to (a) require problem recognition and formulation, (b) be poorly defined, (c) require information seeking, (d) have various acceptable solutions, (e) be embedded in and require prior everyday experience, and (f) require motivation and personal involvement.
As part of their study of practical intelligence, Sternberg and his collaborators have developed measures of "
tacit knowledge" in various domains, especially business management. In these measures, individuals are given written scenarios of various work related situations and then asked to rank a number of options for dealing with the situation presented. The results show that tacit knowledge predicts such criteria such as job performance fairly well, even though it is relatively independent of intelligence test scores and other common selection measures (Sternberg & Wagner, 1993; Sternberg, Wagner, Williams & Horvath, in press). This work, too, has its critics (Jensen, 1993; Schmidt & Hunter, 1993).
Tests as Predictors
School Performance. Intelligence tests were originally devised by Alfred Binet to measure children's ability to succeed in school. They do in fact predict school performance fairly well: the correlation between IS scores and grades is about .50. They also predict scores on school achievement tests, designed to measure knowledge of the curriculum. Note, however, that correlations of this magnitude account for only about 25% of the overall variance. Successful school learning depends on many personal characteristics other than intelligence, such as persistence, interest in school, and willingness to study. The encouragement for academic achievement that is received from peers, family and teachers may also be important, together with more general cultural factors (see Section 5). The relationship between test scores and school performance seems to be ubiquitous. Wherever it has been studied, children with high scores on tests of intelligence tend to learn more of what is taught in school than their lower-scoring peers. There may be styles of teaching and methods of instruction that will decrease or increase this correlation, but none that consistently eliminates it has yet been found (Cronbach and Snow, 1977).
What children learn in school depends not only on their individual abilities but also on teaching practices and on what is actually taught. Recent comparisons among pupils attending school in different countries have made this especially obvious. Children in Japan and China, for example, know a great deal more math than American children even though their intelligence test scores are quite similar (see Section 5). This difference may result from many factors, including cultural attitudes toward schooling as well as the sheer amount of time devoted to the study of mathematics and how that study is organized (Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). In principle it is quite possible to improve the school learning of American children--even very substantially-without changing their intelligence test scores at all.
Years of Education. Some children stay in school longer than others; many go on to college and perhaps beyond. Two variables that can be measured as early as elementary school correlate with the total amount of education individuals will obtain: test scores and social class background. Correlations between IQ scores and total years of education are about .55, implying that differences in psychometric intelligence account for about 30% of the outcome variance. The correlations of years of education with social class background (as indexed by the occupation/ education of a child's parents) are also positive, but somewhat lower.
There are a number of reasons why children with higher test scores tend to get more education. They are likely to get good grades, and to be encouraged by teachers and counselors; often they are placed in "college preparatory" classes, where they make friends who may also encourage them. In general, they are likely to find the process of education rewarding in a way that many low-scoring children do not (Rehberg and Rosenthal, 1978). These influences are not omnipotent: some high scoring children do drop out of school. Many personal and social characteristics other than psychometric intelligence determine academic success and interest, and social privilege may also play a role. Nevertheless, test scores are the best single predictor of an individual's years of education.
In contemporary American society, the amount of schooling that adults complete is also somewhat predictive of their social status. Occupations considered high in prestige (e.g., law, medicine, even corporate business) usually require at least a college degree-16 or more years of education-as a condition of entry. It is partly because intelligence test scores predict years of education so well that they also predict occupational status, and even income to a smaller extent, (Jencks, 1979). Moreover, many occupations can only be entered through professional schools which base their admissions at least partly on test scores: the MCAT, the GMAT, the LSAT, etc. Individual scores on admission-related tests such as these are certainly correlated with scores on tests of intelligence.
Social Status and Income. How well do IQ scores (which can be obtained before individuals enter the labor force) predict such outcome measures as the social status or income of adults? This question is complex, in part because another variable also predicts such outcomes: namely, the socioeconomic status (SES) of one's parents. Unsurprisingly, children of privileged families are more likely to attain high social status than those whose parents are poor and less educated. These two predictors (IQ and parental SES) are by no means independent of one another; the correlation between them is around .33 (White, 1982).
One way to look at these relationships is to begin with SES. According to Jencks (1979), measures of parental SES predict about one-third of the variance in young adults' social status and about one-fifth of the variance in their income. About half of this predictive effectiveness depends on the fact that the SES of parents also predicts children's intelligence test scores, which have their own predictive value for social outcomes; the other half comes about in other ways.
We can also begin with IQ scores, which by themselves account for about one-fourth of the social status variance and one-sixth of the income variance. Statistical controls for parental SES eliminate only about a quarter of this predictive power. One way to conceptualize this effect is by comparing the occupational status (or income) of adult brothers who grew up in the same family and hence have the same parental SES. In such cases, the brother with the higher adolescent IQ score is likely to have the higher adult social status and income (Jencks, 1979). This effect, in turn, is substantially mediated by education: the brother with the higher test scores is likely to get more schooling, and hence to be better credentialled as he enters the workplace.
Do these data imply that psychometric intelligence is a major determinant of social status or income? That depends on what one means by major. In fact, individuals who have the same test scores may differ widely in occupational status and even more widely in income. Consider for a moment the distribution of occupational status scores for all individuals in a population, and then consider the conditional distribution of such scores for just those individuals who test at some given I8. Jencks (1979) notes that the standard deviation of the latter distribution may still be quite large; in some cases it amounts to about 88% of the standard deviation for the entire population. Viewed from this perspective, psychometric intelligence appears as only one of a great many factors that influence social outcomes.
Visit these resources to obtain further information on this topic:
Resources:
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/iku.html
http://www.openeducation.net/
