IQ is an acronym for 'Intelligence Quotient', is a total score derived from several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence, or is a measurement of your intelligence and is expressed in a number. OR IQ is a number representing a person's reasoning ability (measured using problem-solving tests) as compared to the statistical norm or average for their age, taken as 100.
*Intelligence means the capacity
of mind, especially to understand principles, truths, facts or meanings,
acquire knowledge, and apply it to practice; the ability to comprehend and
learn.
*Quotient means a degree or amount
of a specified quality or characteristic, or a result obtained by dividing one
quantity by another. 'Quotient' comes from Latin word "Quotiens"
meaning 'How many times', "quot"= 'how many' and "iens"=
'times'.
The abbreviation "IQ"
was established by the psychologist William Stern for the German term
'Intelligenz quotient', his term for a scoring method for intelligence tests at
University of Breslau he advocated in a 1912 book.
IQ is a score obtained by dividing
a person's mental age score, obtained by administering an intelligence test, by
the person's chronological age, both expressed in terms of years and months.
The resulting fraction is multiplied by 100 to obtain the IQ score.
When current IQ tests were
developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and
scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points
greater or less, although this was not always so historically. By this
definition, approximately two-thirds of the population scores are between IQ 85
and IQ 115. About 2.5 percent of the population scores above 130, and 2.5
percent below 70.
Intelligence tests scores are estimates
of intelligence. IQ scores have been shown to be associated with factors such
as morbidity, mortality, parental social status, and biological parental IQ.
While the heritability of IQ has been investigated for nearly a century, there
is still debate about the significance of heritability estimates and the
mechanisms of inheritance.
Intelligence quotient scores are
used for educational placement, assessment of intellectual disability, and
evaluating job applicants. Even when students improve their scores on
standardized tests, they do not always improve their cognitive abilities, such
as memory, attention and speed.
In research contexts they have
been studied as predictors of job performance, and income. They are also used
to study distributions of psychometric intelligence in populations and the
correlations between it and other variables. Raw scores on IQ tests for many
populations have been rising at an average rate that scales to three IQ points
per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect.
Investigation of different patterns of increases in subtest scores can also
inform current research on human intelligence.
Before IQ tests, there were
attempts to classify people into intelligence categories by observing their behavior
in daily life. Those forms of behavioral observation are still important for
validating classifications based primarily on IQ test scores. Both intelligence
classification by observation of behavior outside the testing room and
classification by IQ testing depend on the definition of
"intelligence" used in a particular case and on the reliability and
error of estimation in the classification procedure.
The English statistician Francis
Galton made the first attempt at creating a standardized test for rating a
person's intelligence. A pioneer of psychometrics and the application of
statistical methods to the study of human diversity and the study of
inheritance of human traits, he believed that intelligence was largely a
product of heredity.
Galton hypothesized that there
should exist a correlation between intelligence and other observable traits
such as reflexes, muscle grip, and head size. He set up the first mental
testing centre in the world in 1882 and he published "Inquiries into Human
Faculty and Its Development" in 1883, in which he set out his theories.
After gathering data on a variety of physical variables, he was unable to show
any such correlation, and he eventually abandoned this research.
In the early 1900's French
psychologist Alfred Binet created the first intelligence test, however, modern
IQ testing in the United States stems from the work of Henry Herbert Goddard.
Goddard was a psychologist who earned his doctorate in psychology from Clark
University in 1899. He translated the Binet test from French to English. This
test was used to test basic intellectual functions in U.S. school children and
to support mental health diagnoses.
Alfred Binet was one of the key
developers of what later became known as the Stanford Binet test. Alfred Binet,
together with Victor Henri and Théodore
Simon had more success in 1905, when they published the Binet-Simon test, which
focused on verbal abilities, it was intended to identify mental retardation in
school children.
The score on the Binet Simon scale
would reveal the child's mental age. For example, a six-year-old child who
passed all the tasks usually passed by six-year-olds but nothing beyond would
have a mental age that matched his chronological age, 6.0. Binet thought that
intelligence was multifaceted, but came under the control of practical
judgment.
Today, there are numerous IQ tests
that are used for different purposes, but most are used to help diagnose
learning disabilities. Since Goddard’s
controversial Binet tests, psychologists have worked to develop numerous other
tests. Most are intended for elementary school-aged children, but some may be
used for adults. The following are some of the IQ test commonly used today;
1. Stanford-Binet Intelligence
Scale
2. Universal Nonverbal Intelligence
3. Differential Ability Scales
4. Peabody Individual Achievement
Test
5. Wechsler Individual Achievement
Test
6. Wechsler Adult Intelligence
Scale
7. Woodcock Johnson III Tests of
Cognitive Disabilities
NB:
It is important to know that IQ
scores can differ to some degree for the same person on different IQ tests, so
a person does not always belong to the same IQ score range each time the person
is tested.
To understand how to get an IQ
test CLICK HERE.
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