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Guidelines for Testing Minority Group Children
Factors involved in the testing of minority group children are presented. The conventional instruments of mental testing are too often developed for the intellectual and social ways of middle-class children. As a result minority group children are excluded from opportunities for training because of "cultural deprivation." The guide explains how this situation could be remedied, and it offers some criteria for interpreting test scores obtained from children who did not have the advantages of the middle-class child. One principal difficulty regarding standardized testing is the reliability of differentiation. A test publisher should describe the reliability sample in terms of factors such as age, sex, and grade level composition, also, the publisher should report subgroup reliabilities. Institutions that use tests regularly for particular minority groups should make their own reliability studies in order to determine whether the tests are reliable when used with these groups. The second difficulty, that of predictive validity, is important because, ordinarily, an individual's test scores describe only his relative standing with respect to a specified norm group. An explanation of his standing should be attempted utilizing background factors, also when long-range predictions are needed, background factors should be considered. The last difficulty, the validity of test interpretation, should be applied to tests in general, test results should be interpreted by competently trained and knowledgeable persons. Medical case histories should be used as well as psychological and educational test records. Too often answers that are deviant from the viewpoint of a majority culture are typical of a minority group. This article is published in the "journal of social issues" volume 20, number 2, april 1964.
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- "Factors involved in the testing of minority group children are presented. The conventional instruments of mental testing are too often developed for the intellectual and social ways of middle-class children. As a result minority group children are excluded from opportunities for training because of "cultural deprivation." The guide explains how this situation could be remedied, and it offers some criteria for interpreting test scores obtained from children who did not have the advantages of the middle-class child. One principal difficulty regarding standardized testing is the reliability of differentiation. A test publisher should describe the reliability sample in terms of factors such as age, sex, and grade level composition, also, the publisher should report subgroup reliabilities. Institutions that use tests regularly for particular minority groups should make their own reliability studies in order to determine whether the tests are reliable when used with these groups. The second difficulty, that of predictive validity, is important because, ordinarily, an individual's test scores describe only his relative standing with respect to a specified norm group. An explanation of his standing should be attempted utilizing background factors, also when long-range predictions are needed, background factors should be considered. The last difficulty, the validity of test interpretation, should be applied to tests in general, test results should be interpreted by competently trained and knowledgeable persons. Medical case histories should be used as well as psychological and educational test records. Too often answers that are deviant from the viewpoint of a majority culture are typical of a minority group. This article is published in the "journal of social issues" volume 20, number 2, april 1964."@en
- "Educators possess special service and instructional skills which, if used wisely, can assist minority group children in overcoming their early disadvantages. Educational psychological tests may help if they are carefully and intelligently employed. Professional training and diagnostic sensitivity are required. Standardized tests currently in use present three principal difficulties when used with disadvantaged minority groups. First, they may not provide reliable differentiation in the range of minority group scores. Also, many characteristics of minority group children affect test performance. The lower-class child will tend to be less verbal, less self-confident, less motivated toward academic achievement, less competitive intellectually, less exposed to stimulating materials in the home, less knowledgeable about the world, and more fearful of strangers than the middle class child. The second difficulty is that the significance of the tests for predictive purposes may be quite different for the minority groups than for the standardization and validation groups. Factors that affect the test scores but which may have little relation to the criterion, such as test-taking skills, anxiety and motivation, may impair predictive validity. Also, the criteria which a test is predicting are usually more complex than the test itself. It is important to recognize the influence of such other factors as personality and background, which may be related to criterion performance. Test results cannot reveal the degree to which the status of disadvantaged children might change if environmental opportunities and incentives for learning were improved. Guidance and special training are therefore very important. Tests labeled "culturally unfair" may be valid predictors for school criteria which may be socially unfair. Most "culture free" tests have low predictive validity for academic work."@en
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- "Guidelines for Testing Minority Group Children"@en