Abstract
Following Snyderman and Rothman (1987, 1988), we surveyed expert opinions on the current state of intelligence research. This report examines expert opinions on causes of international differences in student assessment and psychometric IQ test results. Experts were surveyed about the importance of culture, genes, education (quantity and quality), wealth, health, geography, climate, politics, modernization, sampling error, test knowledge, discrimination, test bias, and migration. The importance of these factors was evaluated for diverse countries, regions, and groups including Finland, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Europe, the Arabian-Muslim world, Latin America, Israel, Jews in the West, Roma (gypsies), and Muslim immigrants. Education was rated by N = 71 experts as the most important cause of international ability differences. Genes were rated as the second most relevant factor but also had the highest variability in ratings. Culture, health, wealth, modernization, and politics were the next most important factors, whereas other factors such as geography, climate, test bias, and sampling error were less important. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the survey (e.g., response rates and validity of expert opinions).
Highlights
IntroductionCognitive ability is understood as the ability to think (intelligence), the disposition of knowledge (the store of true and relevant knowledge), and the intelligent use of this knowledge
Cognitive ability is understood as the ability to think, the disposition of knowledge, and the intelligent use of this knowledge
Seventy-one experts rated possible causes of cross-national differences in cognitive ability based on psychometric IQs and student assessment studies (e.g., PISA, PIRLS, TIMSS)
Summary
Cognitive ability is understood as the ability to think (intelligence), the disposition of knowledge (the store of true and relevant knowledge), and the intelligent use of this knowledge. The current study focuses on international differences in cognitive ability, based on test scores from different countries. International differences in cognitive ability have been estimated using student assessment studies (e.g., TIMSS, PISA, PIRLS; OECD, 2013) and psychometric IQs (Lynn and Vanhanen, 2012). International differences in cognitive ability have been estimated using student assessment studies (e.g., TIMSS, PISA, PIRLS; OECD, 2013) and psychometric IQs (Lynn and Vanhanen, 2012)1 These international differences in cognitive ability are strongly related to country-level differences in wealth, health, democracy, lifespan, education, innovation, and gross-national product (e.g., Hanushek and Woessmann, 2015; Rindermann et al, 2015). In TIMSS 2011, 4th grade Yemeni pupils achieved 209 student assessment study (SAS) points, whereas South Korean pupils achieved 587 SAS points.
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