A Conversion Scale for Comparing Scores on Three Secondary School Intelligence Tests

Abstract

In 1926, the Secondary School Examination Board, composed of a number of private college preparatory schools, appointed a committee to report on the advisability of including an intelligence test as a part of the examinations for entrance to the member schools. An additional function of this committee was to recommend a test to be used. It was found that certain schools were using the results of such tests quite extensively, and that others had experimented or were experimenting with them. Naturally different tests had been used by different schools, so it was necessary as one phase of the work to resolve the various scores to some common denominator in order to enable school executives to translate the scores made on one test into approximately equal scores on another test. This paper presents the conversion or absolute scale worked out by means of which scores made on the Terman Group Tests of Mental Abil ity, Otis Group Intelligence Scale, Advanced Examination, and Otis Self-Administering Test could be stated in somewhat comparable terms. It is recognized, of course, that scores on this absolute scale are not exactly comparable. The aggregation of items on the various tests meas ure different functions, so a score or an IQ obtained on the Terman test is not quite the same thing as one obtained on the Otis Advanced Ex amination, though correlations between the two are high.2 The writer knows of no published correlations between the two varieties of the Otis test, but it should be high since the S elf-Administering Test is made up of items selected from the Advanced Group Intelligence Scale. A cor relation of .72 =!z .03 was obtained between the Terman and the Otis Self-Administering Test in the case of 111 boys used in this present study, who took the two examinations during the same month. It is to be distinctly understood that the absolute scales which follow are in tended as a convenient help to administrators who may have pupils enter