What is an IQ Test?
The IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, is a test that is used to assess a person’s ability to accomplish a certain task, such as doing well in undergraduate, college, or post-graduate studies. IQ assessments are useful for student selection since they predict progress in the programs for which they are configured. They are often used in the process of workforce development by industrial and organizational psychology to assess what experience, talents, ability, and personal characteristics are needed for a particular work.
The Importance of an IQ Test
One of the most significant advantages of an IQ test is that it can often offer key and unique knowledge about a child’s developmental growth that other services would not have picked up on or be reluctant to find out. The tests include a snapshot of a child’s thought at the time. This is because the questions are designed to assess how quickly one responds, how correctly they interpret information, and how effectively they relate this information to their existing knowledge base.
In other words, IQ assessments will assess children’s readiness to understand as opposed to what they have already mastered. A quick IQ test can help parents and teachers to predict how a child will perform on a particular topic, which can help them prepare for that topic more effectively.
How is the IQ Test Measured?
In addition to the important factor of how quickly a child processes information, the standardized tests for IQ also incorporate a much broader range of measures. For example, one of the most important factors influencing the score derived from such a test is how accurately the quotient is calculated. To calculate the quotient, you must know the geometric means, or geometric difference, of each of the number, digit, color, space, and shape items on the IQ assessment. Though the IITJEE board of coaching tries its best to maintain as consistent a standard of performance as possible across all testing instruments, it cannot guarantee that a particular numerical response will be the same on all IQ tests, especially since different sets of IITJEE tests have been administered with varying degrees of rigor.
An IQ test provides scores for a ‘wish number’ associated with each digit and is widely used in the Indian education system. The numerical formulae for the calculation of the wish numbers are based on highly scientific procedures and require advanced knowledge and understanding of statistics. These complex procedures are essentially a part of the reasoning process, where critical decisions have to be made while arriving at a decision. Though these types of IQ tests are highly regarded in the Indian education system, they are also commonly used as scoring mechanisms for testing general intelligence, in other words, in forensic psychology. It is in this context that the significance of the IQ score becomes all the more relevant.
Here is a great TED Talk to goes a bit more in-depth on IQ and its implications:
