[lbo-talk] a nation of haves & have-nots? Americans equally divided...

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Thu Sep 13 19:54:48 PDT 2007


B. wrote:


>
> I've wondered how many of these people have really
> taken Stanford-Binet, etc., in the appropriate
> clinical conditions, and, even moreso, why they took
> it. Apparetly this is a huge number of people! In my
> experience Stanford-Binet isn't administered unless
> the subject is having emotional, educational, or
> psychological adaptation type problems. It isn't like
> a game booth at the carnival that people go do for
> fun; usually it's called for and administered by
> authorities when the subject is showing some signs of
> psycho-social trouble, like trouble in school,
> qualifying for mental disability help, etc.
>
> -B.

Psychometricians are relatively careful about this. The IQ tests are not standardized on the types of samples you're referring to. They do attempt to use a large representative sample when they do the test norming every 10 or 15 years. It is reasonable to claim that a score of 145 on the Stanford-Binet (3 SDs above the mean) corresponds to the 99.9th percentile in IQ performance.

Miles



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