Month: May 2013

Similarity in the g factor structure between- and within-families across racial groups in the NLSY97 and NLSY79

In Bias in Mental Testing (1980, pp. 546-548), Arthur Jensen showed that a congruence coefficient test from a factor analysis of the within- (WF) and between-family (BF) correlations among blacks and whites could yield an identical g factor structure. A similarity in factorial structure for these four groups having been evidenced, he writes :

These correlations are statistically homogeneous; that is, they do not differ significantly from one another. Thus it appears that the g loadings of these seven tests show a very similar pattern regardless of whether they were extracted from the within-family correlations (which completely exclude cultural and socioeconomic effects in the factor analyzed variance) or from the between-families correlations, for either whites or blacks. … This outcome would seem unlikely if the largest source of variance in these tests, reflected by their g loadings, were strongly influenced by whatever cultural differences that might exist between families and between whites and blacks.

Jensen (1980, Table 4) has been replicated by Nagoshi and Johnson (1987, pp. 310-314). I will replicate those earlier tests using NLSY97 and NLSY79. As Jensen (1998, pp. 99-100) noted, the congruence coefficient (CC) can be interpreted as being an index of factor similarity.

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The Onset and Development of B-W Ability Differences: Early Infancy to Age 3 (Part 1)

At what age does the cognitive ability gap between blacks and whites first appear? At what age does the black-white ability gap stop growing?

Knowing the answers to these questions is vital to understanding the etiology of the black-white ability gap, especially if this gap has an environmental cause. However, the only scholarly work that attempts to investigate these issues is John Loehlin’s Race Differences in Intelligence (1975), which is nearly 40 years old. So I will update and expand upon that review here on Human Varieties by summarizing all available measurements of African American cognitive ability from early infancy to age 3; I will also discuss the relevance of this data to current debates in the social sciences.

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IQ advantage of multiracials : A Jensen Effect

In the NLSY97, a Jensen Effect of biracial blacks has been found, using self-reported white ancestry. In the NLSY79, some questionnaires (R00096.00, R00097.00) asked about the respondents’ first and second racial/ethnic origin. When the respondent reported being non-black or white in one of the questionnaires and black in the other, he was categorized as being a multiracial.

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HVGIQ: Bermuda

Bermuda is a tiny British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, some 600 miles from the East Coast of the United States (population: 64,700). Even though Bermuda is 1000 miles from the Caribbean Sea, there are a number of sociological similarities between Bermuda and the Caribbean island nations; it is an associate member of the Caribbean Community. Its economy, much like the Cayman Islands and The Bahamas, is largely based on finance and tourism, and it likewise enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world.

According to the 2000 census, Bermuda is 54.8% black and 34.1% white. IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002) did not include intelligence data for Bermuda, but IQ and Global Inequality (2006) reported an IQ of 90, as the average of two studies. In this post I discuss some overlooked data which suggest that Bermudian blacks have an IQ that is very close to 100, and that there is no IQ gap between black and white Bermudians. There is also some overlooked test data which suggest otherwise, and we are left with some uncertainty over the meaning of the conflicting research. Continue reading

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