My understanding is that every so often IQ tests are revised, etc., to correct for cultural biases, advances in knowledge of neurology, and the like. In addition, if I'm not mistaken -- and I may be -- they are often "recalibrated" so that the median or average score is always 100. This began since IQ tests' origins in the eugenics'-infatuated 1910s, etc., as Gould discusses excellently in _The Mismeasure of Man_.
The IQ tests I was administered at age 12 were part of standard school district rigamarole given to "problem kids." For me, the problem was absenteeism. I didn't want to go to the fucking place. That's why they paid to have them performed on me on their dime. In any event, I fucking hated the place, and couldn't stand being there. The IQ test was given as a battery of other rather humiliating sorts of tests. ("Can you please tell me what are this man and woman doing in this picture?" etc.) It all only convinced me a lot of school is shit, essentially. The problem, of course was me -- not the school's, anything systemic, etc. Given all this, I do also understand psych-trained folks are very defensive of this arbitrary test that does result, as Gould complained, in a single, unipolar number designed to measure a very ambiguous faculty -- but so are many folks in social sciences are of their various traditions.
And, again, why someone would want to go out of their way, into their adulthood, to find out their IQ? Why? As Bitch|Lab asked.
-B.
J. Tyler wrote:
> An IQ score measures only how well one takes a
standardized test.