In this analysis of the Project Talent data, the g factor model as represented by the Spearman’s Hypothesis (SH) was confirmed for the black-white cognitive difference but not for the sex difference. Results from MGCFA and MCV corroborate each other. MGCFA detected small-modest bias with respect to race but strong bias with respect to sex cognitive difference. Full result is available at OSF.
Category: Spearman’s Hypothesis
This is a 2-part article. In this first part, the most important studies on internal test bias with respect to racial groups in the item-level, subtest-level and construct-level are reviewed. The proposed causes will be discussed. Generally, the most commonly used IQ tests aren’t biased or only minimally biased as to be of no practical value.
The best methodologies with an application using the Wordsum GSS for the Black-White group will be discussed in the second part of the article : DIF Review and Analysis of Racial Bias in Wordsum Test using IRT and LCA.
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The idea that schooling raises intelligence still prevails. The influential study review of Ceci (1991) concluded that schooling has a strong impact on IQ scores despite his final warning that observed score does not equate real intelligence. After, many more studies were published, including latent factor modeling and quasi-experimental designs. It is unclear whether education truly improves general intelligence modeled as latent factor or whether long-lasting IQ gain involves far transfer effect. More likely, the answer to all of these questions is negative.
I’ve been catching up on recent research on psychometrics, behavioral genetics, race differences, and so on. I’ll be posting some comments on papers I found particularly interesting. The first is Frisby and Beaujean’s study of Spearman’s hypothesis. Continue reading
According to Spearman’s hypothesis, the magnitude of the black-white gap on a given cognitive ability test is primarily determined by the test’s g loading. Tests that are better measures of g are associated with larger gaps.
The Differential Ability Scales, Second Edition, or the DAS-II, is an IQ test for assessing children and adolescents. It comprises a total of 21 subtests, although in the present analysis only 13 subtests are used, because not all tests are administered across age groups. I will use the method of correlated vectors (MCV) to test whether g loadings are correlated with mean racial differences on the DAS-II subtests. In addition to the black-white gap, I will also investigate if the test performance of Asians and Hispanics is predicted by g loadings. Continue reading
Hu (2013, September, 5; 2013, July, 5; 2013, August, 18) has raised some interesting points. I will comment on a few of them here and present several new analyses.
Cultural Loading, Heritability, and the BW gap
As Meng Hu noted, Kan et al. (2011) showed that subtest cultural-loadings, as they estimated them, correlated both with the magnitude of the B/W subtest gaps and with subtest heritability estimates. The authors interpreted these associations as support for a GxE hypothesis of individual differences and offered a model similar to that proposed by Flynn and Dickens (2001). Moreover, Kan et al. (2011) saw the associations between cultural-load and heritability and between cultural-load and the magnitude of the BW gap as problematic for what they termed a biological g model. Below, I will show that g-loadings fully mediate the association between cultural loadings and the two other variables noted and therefore that what is in need of explanation is only the association between cultural-loadings and g-loadings. I will then proceed to offer an account for this.
First, I looked to see if g-loadings mediated the association between the BW gap and cultural loadings. They did. Then I looked to see if cultural-loadings mediated the association between the BW gap and g-loadings. They did not fully. The results are shown below. As reliability estimates were not presented for all subtests, I ran the analysis with and without reliability corrections. Continue reading
