Test Bias and Stereotype Threat

Since the dawn of education system in human civilization, there have been various methods to measure aptitude of the students, to check how much they have learned. With the change in education system, there have been reforms in testing mechanisms too. Nowadays, in order to make a test “fair” to everyone, so called standardized tests have been developed. However, such tests are not free from frailties. It is because despite of being academically standard, they are socioeconomically, culturally, racially and even in terms of gender unfair to certain extents. Such cases can be explained using topics like test bias and stereotype threat.

According to Writeslaw.com (2009), test bias is “The difference in test scores that is attributable to demographic variables (e.g., gender, ethnicity, and age).” It has also been termed as Cultural Bias (Schellenberg, 2004). So, it is clear that there is an inevitable relationship between test bias and culture. Generally, it is found that people of particular culture are favored by a specific test than other cultures. For instance, let us take a person from middle-income family, who will certainly have a different way of life (culture) than a rich person. On average she/he will be less likely to be as good as her/his rich counterparts, if a test focuses more on the things that rich people are used to like expensive cars or other items of luxury.  

Similarly, “Stereotype threat refers to being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group.” (Reducingstereotypethreat.org, n.d.). It is obvious from the definition that Stereotype Threat is directly related with the groups that are normally considered as inferior, which in general sense can be applied to the races that are considered as minority or less powerful. Also, in case of gender, women are more likely to face stereotype threat as men have dominated women across many cultures throughout the world. If a test emphasizes more on a particular race or gender, it is more likely that the other races or gender will feel lack of confidence and as a result perform poorer than in normal condition (Reducingstereotypethreat.org, n.d.).

To give an example, we can take the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) reasoning test. In it, we can divide the test takers into two categories: US high-school graduates and International students. The test shows test bias in a sense that most international students had a good score in Mathematics section but a poor score in Critical Reading section. It is purely logical to say that the one who is a native speaker of English will have a better vocabulary, and can easily do better than non-native speakers like most international students in Critical Reading tasks. And that was why the Critical Reading scores of international students turned out to be poorer when compared to the native speakers.

Similarly, the stereotype threat was there in terms of socioeconomic factor i.e. richer students and poorer students. As some people may not be from a well-off family, the registration cost readily becomes an economic burden for them, and they feel the pressure to do well in a single attempt. On the other hand, the richer counterparts can appear the test twice and even thrice to achieve a better score, which necessarily does not mean that they are better. However, in the end, the highest scores across all the tests are considered, and they are evaluated to be better than whom they actually might not be.   

Therefore, just giving a uniform pattern of questions in order to test the intelligence is not enough in analyzing true ability of the test taker. There are many cultural, racial and socioeconomic factors behind it. As long as such factors influence the test taker when appearing that intelligence test, it is almost inevitable to get accurate or fair enough judgments about an individual’s intelligence.

References:

Wikipedia (2012), Race and Intelligence, Accessed: October 10, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Reducingstereotypethreat.org (n.d.) , What is stereotype threat? Accessed: October 10, 2012, http://reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html

Schellenberg, S. J. (2004), Test Bias or Cultural Bias: Have We Really Learned Anything? , Accessed: October 10, 2012, http://datacenter.spps.org/uploads/Test_Bias_Paper.pdf

Wrightslaw.com (2009),Glossary of Assessment terms, Accessed: October 10, 2012,  http://www.wrightslaw.com/links/glossary.assessment.htm

 © Dixit Bhatta 2013