Back in 1977, Victor Serebriakoff published a book titled Check Your Child's I.Q. which included an intelligence test copyrighted that same year by Steven Langer. The test was normed on a few thousand public school students in suburban Cook County, Illinois. It, along with an answer key, scoring instructions, and charts showing both percentiles and approximate I.Q. scores, were all included in the book. The copyrights of the two: the book and the included test, were held separately. The book is still available, relatively cheaply, on the resale market. Anyone who wants to, as the title suggests, check their child's I.Q., may buy a copy of the book, administer the test, follow the instructions, and obtain the (a) result.
The test as published in the book includes instructions for 1-on-1 administration with no time limit specified, but the original test was administered in a group setting, therefore designed to be administered in a single class period - about 50 minutes.
In the ensuing nearly 50 years, Dr. Steven Langer, inventor, creator, and original copyright holder of the test, has died. Fortunately for persons who would like a free, easy-to-administer, high-quality, accurate I.Q. test, Dr. Langer's estate (in the person of his literary executor) has allowed me to redraw, reprint, republish, and distribute the test, which I have named the ITY or Intelligence Test for Youth.
I have done so; redrawing or obtaining (and substituting) all the graphics used in the original test, which were too low-resolution by current standards.
The test results - meaning the I.Q. score a parent or other administrator comes up with using the charts provided - are quite likely out of date. For one thing the test was normed 50 years ago, and the Flynn Effect was a real thing that occurred since the 1970s.* For another, a reverse Flynn effect appears to be happening now (Flynn himself noticed this just before he died), which reversing trend could complicate any calculations and/or results. And thirdly, the original test - for technical reasons** "ran high" for test-takers on the high end.
Is there still any value in using such an old test? Sure there is. I frequently hear from parents - typically but not always moms - who want to find out, just what is their child's I.Q. They are not particularly concerned with the esoterica of the Flynn Effect, renorming, and historic/arbitrary choices of standard deviations. They will be and are satisfied with a "pretty good result" which this test does provide. Think about it - or in technical terms, "consider the null hypothesis" - do you really think that a test is no longer any good just 'cause it's old? Is it going, for example, to tell a parent that their dull child, is actually smart? Of course not. If you review the test for yourself you can just tell that it's a pretty good test still. And despite the maybe-still-existing-or-maybe-now-gone-away Flynn effect, the test still is no walk in the park. I'm an adult and this test is for children; yet it took me 6 hours to figure out one of the harder questions! And I had a calculator, which was not originally used (though we do allow it now).
In short, the test is still a good test, but you have to take into account some of the things mentioned above, and keep in mind that for smart kids/tweens/teens, the ITY may give an unduly high I.Q. score
*There's a wealth of information about the Flynn Effect and it is still heavily studied to this day. Basically, during these past decades, populations worldwide have steadily performed better on I.Q. tests. Therefore, to answer questions like "Who's in the 90th percentile?" or "Who has an I.Q. of 130 or above?" requires "re-norming" the test, which just means, administering it all over again, ideally to some thousands of test-takers. Thus seeing how folks nowadays "measure up", which results can in turn answer the question "How does my child measure up relative to the population as a whole?"
**Back in the 1970s there was still a debate going on, as to how to convert raw test scores to I.Q. values. Most test authors used a standard deviation of 15, which is the current standard today. However some tests, including the Stanford-Binet and the ITY, used a standard deviation of 16. Basically this means that a child whose I.Q. was 150 according to current standards, would have gotten a score of 160 from the Stanford-Binet or the ITY. To understand more fully you need to study the normal distribution and learn just what is meant by these terms. A decent (but incomplete, flawed) analogy is, it's kind of like measuring something in yards versus meters. A field that is 130 meters long, is also (about) 142 yards long. The length of the field is the same; you're just using different measurement units.
***The numbers used in this example are approximate.
Complete, detailed instructions for how to administer the test are available in the resource section below. One change since the 1970s; we now permit a 4-function (non-programmable) calculator, which the test administrator may provide. Some of the questions involve figuring out number series, which further involve some of the basic 4 arithmetic functions.
One can make the case that allowing the use of a calculator, makes the test easier; and this is both obvious and true. However it will be accounted for eventually as modern-day renorming gets carried out. Meanwhile we are, here and now, dealing with (many) test-takers who simply do not have the ability to do, for example, long division.
This may actually increase the "purity" of the test. The number series questions are designed to assess intelligence, by testing how well the test-taker can "figure out" what is going on; postulating and discerning patterns, detecting an "odd man out", figuring out how the various terms in the series relate to one another. The ability to think like that - which on its face appears highly g-loaded, is a different skill than the skill(set) involved in correctly executing the processes of multiplication and long division on paper. These latter skills involve such things as attention to detail, ability to carefully execute a memorized and detailed/intricate (and from the test-taker's point of view, apparently arbitrary) process, and (using the American system) ability to repeatedly guess, and recover from a wrong guess, and handle the frustration and/or anguish involved of "guessing gone awry". These are all plausibly good skills and attributes, yet none of them are the same as g. The change to the ITY procedure, can be seen as a move to a better, more accurate test. It (now) measures what we're really after, better than it did before.
The test itself:
The sample test:
If you read the administration instructions you will see that instructions are included for optionally giving the test-taker a "sample test" designed to get them comfortable with the testing environment, and also to familiarize themselves with test-taking. Depending on the test-taker's background they may not be used to tests, either "standardized" or any other kind.*
Instructions:
Answer sheets:
Scoring:
Thanks to the estate of Steven Langer for permission to redraw and republish his work under the terms of the license below.
Information: [email protected]
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