IQ, or as it is commonly known, the intelligence quotient, has a long colorful history ever since it was first developed around 1905. Think of Man’s evolution since we first learned to walk on two legs.
You are asked to calculate your intelligence and assign it a binomial value, hopefully, an accurate one. That brings us back to the query, “How is IQ calculated?” Read on to know more.
When it comes to the same query, “How IQ is calculated?” it is not all that convoluted. All you need to do is assess a person’s mental age, divide the result by their correct age, and multiply the results by 100.
Let’s assume you are planning to calculate the IQ for a 12-year-old whose mental age can be 10. Then, his IQ is calculated like this, 12/10=12*100= 120. His IQ is calculated to be 120, which was considered a fair median among the population in the early days.
That sounds simple enough. It is enough to make you want to scratch your head at “a storm in a teacup” So what gives? That is why you need to review the rest of the op-ed closely.
- How is IQ calculated?
True, IQ was supposed to be relatively easy to calculate once you have figured out the student’s mental age. And that was what Binet had opted to do about half a century ago.
And the other option available back then was comparing the student’s score with other students to plot out the various scores and work out the median. As you can see, neither method was satisfactory for one reason or the other.
And now, thanks to psychometricians getting into the play hare, with a few more changes, the current versions of the IQ test have been developed. On the positive side, the updated IQ tests are more focused and less biased due to race or culture.
Moreover, the current versions mostly use a testing sample to test the general student population. Then the generated scores are plotted to provide the school with an overview of the IQ scores. As the baseline scores are ready, these tests and all their variants can be used to gauge the IQ scores of individual students.
- How is intelligence measured?
Now, if you are still mulling over the ways and means of how IQ is calculated, then you know by now that this is one of the first queries that you should have looked at.
And as any good psychologist would tell you, one of the easiest things for an adult to get his intelligence measured is to head over to measure his IQ. And you can get it done quickly; all you need to do is go to the psychologist and get him to conduct a test that utilizes the Binet-Simon intelligence scale.
Remember that this is not an actual measurement since most experts agree that intelligence evolves. Instead, it is an indicator that can help a teacher learn if her student is intelligent enough.
- Misgivings:
Ever since Binet developed the first IQ tests in collaboration with the French government, he did have several misgivings regarding the same. One was that his test would be misused to target the super-intelligent kids. Well, that was the stuff of what Science Fiction generally loves and which, you can even claim, influenced the pivotal story of “The terminal man.”
What Binet had greatly feared was that their invention would be used to segregate school children. And sadly for Binet, his fears were justified when the US Military used his test to enlist fresh young candidates from high school for world war 1.
With the second world war, even worse was to come. Germany kick-started the racial segregation of Jews. Hitler was on the march for his “Final solution,” and Binet’s discovery formed a big part of the whole “race theory.”
- Modern tests and current applications:
What makes the current modern IQ tests more attractive is that they can be streamlined to suit various industrial sectors rather than something specific like the army. Moreover, these IQ tests often glean out research geniuses in advance. The student’s progress is monitored, reviewed, and tracked accordingly.
What makes modern IQ tests remarkable is that they confirm that the environment plays a pivotal role in intelligence development. And this is why the IQ level difference between different nations has flattened out of late.
This mainly indicates that the corresponding nations are all well-connected, with the students being able to access the same opportunities. Hence, there’s not much difference between the IQ median levels in these countries.
And this is how IQ is calculated and what it is used for today. While it can, and in all likelihood, be used by several organizations to use IQ score results to screen job applicants, they have an overreaching application that covers several sectors.
