Sex Differences in Intelligence-Test Scores in the Elementary School

Abstract

The outcome of any intelligence test may be regarded as con ditioned by a series of factors, such as age, sex, native ability, school training, practice, and race. Of these factors, comparatively little attention has been paid to sex, perhaps because the sex difference was regarded as of little magnitude or of little practical import. In the classifications of pupils, for example, the scores of either sex have been, doubtless quite properly, compared with the single standard score for the age or grade in question, which has been itself derived from the scores obtained by hundreds of children of both sexes combined, to furnish the standard age score or the standard grade score. Most investigators, however, have been aware of the existence of a small sex difference, and this difference has at least an aca demic interest when it is considered in its possible theoretical rela tions to the rate of physical and mental maturity of the two sexes during childhood and adolescence. Moreover, it possesses still greater interest when the direction of the sex difference is discovered to be reversed in the secondary school. It seems worth while, there fore, to assemble pertinent facts concerning the sex differences in elementary-school scores and then to compare this situation with that revealed in the high school. In this paper, accordingly, I shall present facts concerning two well-known intelligence tests designed for elementary-school use, namely, the National Intelli gence Test, Scale A, and the Illinois General Intelligence Scale. Subsequently, I shall present facts concerning sex differences dis covered by the use of Army Alpha in the high school.