RUSHTON CLAIMS S.AFRICA 84 COLLEGE, 70 GENERAL IQ i:\doc\web\99\07\safiq.txt Date forwarded: Wed, 19 May 1999 09:42:07 -0400 (EDT) Date sent: Wed, 19 May 1999 11:28:56 +0100 To: upstream-list@cycad.com, upstream-list@cycad.com From: Chris Brand Subject: Re: [Upstream] Apartheid fails the intelligence test Forwarded by: upstream-list@cycad.com Send reply to: upstream-list@cycad.com >Has Ravens Matrices been employed in post-apartheid Africa? > McDOUGALL NEWSLETTER, 16 ii '99: _____________ AFRICAN IQ OF 84 -- AND THAT'S IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS! Phil Rushton here, reporting on my recent trip to South African universities in search of a high-IQ African population. I gave Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices to 300 African and White first- year university students. The African students scored at the 14th percentile -- which is equivalent to an IQ of 84. Assuming these students are {like White college students today} one standard deviation above their own population mean, my study corroborates previous findings of IQ = 70 for the general African population (e.g. as reviewed in The Bell Curve, see especially the Afterword to the paperback edition). The classic Raven's Matrices should have been very easy for university students. Indeed Africans answered correctly 44 of the test's 60 items, so one cannot say they did not understand what was required of them. Yet a score of 44 is what White 14-year-olds obtain. The items behaved in the same way [in their statistical distributions and inter-correlations] for Africans as for Whites. Merely, the items proved more difficult for Africans. The test was effectively given untimed, both Africans and Whites being allowed one- and-a-half hours to finish -- though most did so within 30 minutes. This paper is under editorial review. In another study (also under review), I re-analyzed a set of data from 154 13- to-15-year-old secondary school students from Soweto, Johannesburg, on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). Here, too, the Africans scored 1.5 to 2 standard deviations below U.S. norms (both blacks and whites combined), suggesting a Black population IQ of about 70 to 75. Importantly, the African-White differences were more pronounced on tests loaded more highly for g than it was on tests on which results were less correlated g (r =0.77, p = .05). [g is the general factor on intelligence tests.] This .77 effect remained even when the g factor was extracted from the Black rather than from the White standardization sample (r = 0.60, p <.05). McDNL COMMENT: This is an astonishing result in a Black group that is presumably as test-sophisticated and high-achieving as could ever be found in Africa. -- The usual criticism of population estimates of IQ =70 for Black Africa has been that testees must somehow have been unfamiliar or unhappy with procedures of testing. It should be said that the classic Raven's Matrices is a test on which typical British prisoners (who have virtually never achieved university entrance standards) will score around 40 in just 15 minutes' work. The test essentially involves the completion of abstract wallpaper-type patterns: in each item, the testee picks one of six ways of completing a pattern from which one piece has been removed; and there are plenty of easy items that help testees to understand the principles involved and to feel they have got off to a good start. ___________________ Chris Brand Edinburgh. Author of 'The 'g' Factor' [Wiley DePublisher, 1996]. For overview, CV, psychology articles and access to McDougall NewsLetters [for neoliberalism], see http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk. -- "I deplore what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." Attributed variously to Voltaire and to Evelyn Beatrice Hall, but never to Edinburgh Looneyversity's Principal Dame Stewart Sutherland. (Voltaire wrote, in 1770: "Monsieur l'Abbe', I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.") -- --- This is a message from the Upstream mailing list. Visit the Upstream Website at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/ Visit the Upstream Mailing List archives at http://cycad.com/upstream-list-archive To subscribe to this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject subscribe To unsubscribe from this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject unsubscribe