How is intelligence tested?
The first intelligence tests were developed in France in the early 1900s. The test was used as a tool to assess whether children needed specialized education in primary schools. Based on the test result, the child's "mental age" was calculated. It was intended to indicate whether the child was at the average for children of the same age, or was closer to the average for older or younger children. Mental age was later developed into the "intelligence quotient" - IQ - and over the course of the next century, a large number of methods have been developed for measuring IQ.
Porteus Maze: Draw a line through the maze. This test has been a sub-test in many IQ-tests.
Although all IQ tests are meant to measure intelligence, there are huge differences between them
Some tests emphasize linguistic knowledge, such as vocabulary and understanding of concepts. Other tests are designed to be performed without using words. Many IQ tests are composed of various tasks that are meant to measure several different aspects of intelligence. They produce both an IQ score, and information about ability-related strengths and weaknesses.
All IQ tests rest on the premise that intelligence is a measurable quantity
People can be more or less intelligence and the amount of intelligence is normally distributes in a population. An IQ test is constructed in such a way that the average result is 100 and that test results are evenly around this average so that the vast majority of the population gets an IQ score between 85 – 110. Establishing the average, i.e. the normal IQ of the population, is often called norming. Norming is done by trying out the test on a supposedly representative sample of the population. An IQ score tells you how well you have done on an IQ test compared to the average results in a selected group of test subjects.
An IQ scale defines and measure normality and deviation
Your IQ-score indicates how much you deviate from normal in the population you are being compared to. An IQ scale is thus a relative scale. In order for an American IQ test to be used in, for example, Norway, it must be translated, culturally adapted and standardized to fit a Norwegian population.
Our project has looked at some widely used IQ tests from the 1920s to the present and tried to shed light on what happens when non-Norwegian IQ tests are adapted for use in Norway. Who created the Norwegian test versions and why? What ideas about culture, intelligence, normality and representativity have formed the basis for the adaptation of the tests and how are these processes conditioned by economic and social structures and cultural presumptions?
