American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'

Re:American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Rev... by zaptheimpaler on Monday April 10, 2023 @10:08PM (#35519844)

There is a raw score underlying any given IQ test that is an absolute value. It might just be as simple as the number of questions you get right. When testing a population, these scores form a normal distribution. We then scale the raw scores so that the mean/median or center of the distribution becomes an IQ of 100. So the raw scores can be compared across time and can vary, even though the IQ cannot as you said.

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Re:American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Rev... by Galanwe on Monday April 10, 2023 @10:14PM (#35519897)

Hum, but my understanding was that the whole point of the normalization was that the raw scores are not in a scale that is meaningful outside of the symposium which they were placed in?

Does it really make sense to compare raw scores from different tests? If that were the case then the normalization step would be useless, we would have an absolute measure of intelligence.

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Re:American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Rev... by whatshisface on Monday April 10, 2023 @10:40PM (#35520091)

A new test that was substantially different from an earlier test would have to be compared against it to make sure it was measuring the same stuff, and I have seen a few studies checking how well different tests were correlated.

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Re:American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Rev... by zaptheimpaler on Monday April 10, 2023 @11:50PM (#35520576)

Well yes, if you look at the paper summary they are comparing the scores for an overlapping set of questions, all from one question bank used in many tests if i understand correctly.

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