Measuring Our Intelligence

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 43, 19 August 1939, Page 21

Measuring Our Intelligence

boys brighter, intellectually, than girls? Have children of one State a better mental equipment than the children of another? Are children in country schools of superior mentality to city school children, or vice versa? Do significant differences exist between the standards of schools situated in high-grade and lowgrade social areas?. These are but few of the many problems which education authorities have been endeavouring to solve by means of tests carried out in various countries, says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." In any education system it is necessary to have definite standards by which the knowledge and intelligence of students can be assessed, and children graded into classes, but educationists nowadays demand something more. Besides standards of knowledge and intelligence for class grouping, they want standards of comparisons between schools and schools, between education systems of different States and different countries, and a standardising of intelligence tests amongst children. Efforts to bring about a standardisation of intelligence tests in Australia have been made from time to time on behalf of various interests—by teachers' colleges, university schools of education, and inspectors and psychologists associated with . children's courts. It is said that the work has usually been undertaken to satisfy a demand by specialists for local norms, i.e., set standards of development to represent an average of achievement for each group. The forms of tests carried out have been either imported from other countries and adapted to Australian conditions, or prepared locally on lines similar to methods adopted in England or the United States. Many tests have been. made also by individual teachers in Australian schools, but the results of these have not been collected and systematised. Interesting information concerning investigations made in recent years on i behalf of the Australian Council for ' Educational Research is published in a l volume entitled "The Standardisation ! of Intelligence Tests in Australia," by ;

'G. A. Mclntyre. Having already made itself responsible for the construction and Commonwealth-wide standardisation of a number of objective tests of scholastic achievement, in respect of arithmetic, silent reading, individual reading, spelling, and chemistry, the Australian Council for Educational Research considered it desirable to supplement the scholastic tests by the application of gi-oup intelligence test over the same area. Accordingly, with the cooperation of the various Education Departments, tests were applied in all States of Australia to 30,000 school

children in State primary, superprimary, and secondary schools, and by arrangement with the New Zealand Council for Educational Research similar investigations were undertaKen in New Zealand. The tests carried out in these investigations took two forms —verbal and non-verbal. The type of verbal test applied was known as the Otis self-administering test (intermediate form), which is presented in the form of questions to which correct answers are required. The non-verbal test took the form of a specially constructed set of pictures of various objects set out in groups, with relevant questions. Time limits were specified for the furnishing of answers to the various sets of questions—which were very simple—and on the times taken to com-1

plete the answers, as well as the manner of answering, was the intelligence of each individual measured. In the Mclntyre report, which was published recently, it is stated that a number of comparisons based on the results of the tests had been made, but in each comparison it was wise to consider whether the experimental differences might be accounted for by environmental factors before falling back on the idea that a true difference in innate ability had been disclosed. The actual experimental differences were as follows:— 1. Overlap between the age groups, grade groups, and mental age groups diminish in that order. 2. Girls in the age band ten to

thirteen years scored higher than boys in the Otis, and lower in the nonverbal test. For both tes'.s the standard deviation of boys was greater than for girls. ' 3. Children in small rural schools scored lower on the average than children in other schools. 4. Results in conformity with other studies indicate marked differences between children whose parents are in the highest and lowest occupational ratings. 5. Inter-State rankings for both Otis and non-verbal tests conform to average starting age, and also previously determined rankings on scholastic tests. 6. Australian and New Zealand medians are lower than the norms for U.S.A., Australia ranking lowest. • (