RollTide said:
Racially or culturally biased is what many like to call a test when the results don't fit your world view. Or the way you would like things to be.
Why would the nfl use a racially biased test? 70% of the players are black. It seems to me they would have gone out of their way to find a test that was not that way. I assume you have actually looked at those sample questions?
A loaf of bread costs 10 cents. Mary bought 6 loaves so how much did it cost her? Cultually biased?
You have a question involving 5 shapes. 4 are 4 sided and one is a pentagon. Which one is different? Cultually biased?
And who formulates these tests anyway? Some klansman? No, it's a bunch of psychoplogists and socialists, i mean social scientists. The same exact people who will rail about how biased the test when the results come out..
My wife is from the philippines. Based on your thinking she would do poorly on this test after all she comes from a different culture and is not white. She got all 15 sample questions right. I guess those darned asians in general ruin those cultually biased theories eh?
She did well not just because she is smart but because she is educated which gets to the heart of the matter. To do well on the wonderlic you have to be able to read with comprehension and do basic math. If you can't read well enough to understand the questions or your math skills are poor you will suck on this test.
Remember this is a timed test. You have only 12 minutes to answer 50 questions. That's not even 15 seconds per question. Reading comprehension is everything.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0761912304/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-7327760-6802552#reader-link
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/95/950816Arc5120.html
"Standardized tests can not accurately measure intellectual merit because racial and gender stereotypes interfere with the intellectual functioning ofthose taking the tests, according to Stanford psychology Professor Claude Steele. "
http://www.theafrican.com/Magazine/IQ.htm
http://www.liberalartsandcrafts.net/contentcatalog/social/bias.shtml
"Cultural bias has long been a problem for test designers. The kinds of biases found in schools, including standardized tests, vary from language differences to exposure to certain historical truths."
http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar98/dial.html
"In 1972, Robert Williams, an African-American psychologist, developed the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity to demonstrate that testing of information indigenous to one’s culture can result in higher IQ scores for those with a different cultural background from the mainstream. "
http://www.nasponline.org/publications/cq312beyondg.html
"Yes, certain minority groups score consistently lower on intelligence tests than European-Americans, but the cause, in our opinion, has to do with the concept of fairness. Most intelligence tests measure crystallized abilities, those abilities acquired through formal and informal experiences and education. By definition, these abilities are inseparable from prior learning or achievement, so they cannot be true measures of innate ability. Those who have enriched backgrounds and educational experiences typically score better on crystallized measures than those who come from impoverished or varied backgrounds. Does this mean the former children are smarter? We think not.
Those who use group differences to draw conclusions about racial group intelligence tend to ignore within-group variability and often collapse different abilities into a global IQ score for subsequent group comparisons (Suzuki & Valencia, 1997). For instance, we typically use language to measure crystallized abilities, so anyone whose primary language is not English, or those who use colloquial or nonstandard forms of English, will be less likely to do well on crystallized tasks or any other tasks requiring verbal facility. Intelligence test scores are intimately related to academic achievement in a reciprocal fashion (Ceci & Williams, 1997). If one has a good education and enriched environment, one will probably score better on intelligence tests. However, if one has a limited experience and education, one will not score as well. For these reasons, intelligence tests can be unfair for children of color or cultural difference, but the unfairness is not statistical, it's the result of the clinician's error in interpreting a low crystallized score as being the result of low intelligence. Ever since Binet and Simon developed the first "true" intelligence test, our intelligence tests have been unfair to some groups, individual people of cultural or linguistic difference from the overall normative population."