Bias in the Validity of Predicted College Grades in Four Ethnic Minority Groups

Abstract

Measures of high school achievement and scholastic aptitude are often used to predict college freshman grades. Are these predictions biased for members of ethnic minorities? Majority freshmen in a large state university in one year were used to develop a regression equation for predicting first-semester grade point average from high school grade point average and College Board Scholastic Aptitude Test scores. This majority-based equation was used to make predictions in ethnic minority groups of Asian, Hispanic, black, and American Indian students in two successive freshman classes. If unbiased, the predictions would have been (1) at the correct level of achievement in each group, and (2) of equal accuracy in each group. Predictive bias in the form of small but significant over prediction did occur, except among American Indians. Possible bias in predictive accuracy was made difficult to detect because the prediction error variances were moderately high in all ethnic groups in both years. Total error variances were slightly larger in the black and Hispanic minority groups than in the other minority groups, although only a single significant difference was found.