INTELLIGENCE TESTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22827, 11 March 1936, Page 15

INTELLIGENCE TESTS

RESEARCH IN NEW ZEALAND 30,000 CHILDREN TO BE EXAMINED How does the intelligence of New Zealand children compare with that of children in Australia, the United States of America, and Great Britain? What differences of intelligence are there between town and country children? Arc there, as some authorities have suspected, certain “ pockets ” of population of a general low level of intelligence in New Zealand? Is there any relation between the intelligence of a child and the occupation of his father? These are some of the questions it will be possible to answer, tentatively at least, after the New Zealand Council for Educational Research has completed standardised intelligence tests on some 30,000 school children in this country. These teats will be given during the last week of this month.

An account of the council’s plan is given by its executive officer, Dr C. E, Beeby, in the March issue of National Education, the publication of the New Zealand Educational Institute.

“ The essence of the intelligence test lies in its standardisation,” he writes, “but as far as I know no successful attempt has been made to standardise a test over a wide range of primary school ages throughout New Zealand, although a few standardisations of a smaller character have been completed. In actual school practice, English and American tests have generally been used on the rather ill-founded assumption‘that they were ‘ near enough.’ It is to remedy this defect that the New Zealand Council for Educational Research proposes to standardise tests on New Zealand children during the last week in March. The Australian Council for Educational Research is co-operating, and will apply the same tests at the same time throughout all the Australian States.” TWO TESTS TO BE USED. Two tests will be used, one an American test of verbal character, and the other, which has been specially constructed by the Australian Council for Educational Research, is of a non-verbal character, and involves thinking in terms of pictures and diagrams. The latter test will be particularly useful with those children who do poorly on the verbal test, not because of low intelligence, but because their minds do not deal easily with one special instrument of thought, the written or spoken word. Both tests are very simply administered, and the time taken to give each test to a class is roughly 35 minutes. In the primary schools all children in Standard 111 to Form II inclusive will be tested, so as to get class-norms as well as agenorms. Children between 10 and 13 will he tested even if they are below Standard 111. In the post-primary schools the testa will be given'only to those between the ages of 10 and 13. The main purpose of the investigation is to provide intelligence tests, valid for New Zealand conditions, which shall be available to administrators and teachers throughout the country. When a satisfactory New Zealand standardisation is established, the tests will be printed in hulk, and sold to accredited persons at cost price, which will be about one-tenth of what is at present paid for such teats in New Zealand.

RESULT OF STANDARDISATION. “ Once the tests have been standardised. an unlimited number of new investigations becomes possible, especially in the realm of educational and vocational guidance,” writes Dr Beeby. “ With what degree of certainty, for instance, could one predict from his intelligence test rating a child’s chances of passing the Proficiency or the University Entrance Examination? Admittedly other factors besides pure intelligence help to determine academic success and failure, and no one knowing anything about the subject would determine a child’s future career on the basis of any test alone. “At the same time, a teacher in either a primary or a secondary school would find himself in an immeasurably stronger position in giving advice to a parent if he could say, * Of all the children in the past who have had intelligence and school record equivalent to your son’s, only 5 per cent, have ever passed the University Entrance Examination. Knowing that, take your own choice of post-primary course.’ Preliminary investigations, for instance, seem to show that the critical intelligence quotient in the case of the University Entrance is somewhere about 110. Odd children below that level will pass, and a certain number above it will fail, but so far as present, results show they are, in both cases, the exceptions. To generalise from the few cases so far examined would be dangerous, but the standardisation of a cheap and reliable intelligence test will open the way to wider investigations leading, perhaps, to a reorientation of our whole post-primary system of education.”