Gould 1982

Question 1

What was the sample?

Answer 1

1.75 million US military recruits during WW1

Question 2

What was the research method?

Answer 2

review of Yerkes study, who used a quasi experiment

Question 3

What was the research design?

Answer 3

yerkes used independent measures

Question 4

What was the procedure?

Answer 4

Yerkes developed 3 tests
-Army Alpha test, designed for literate recruits. It included items with which we are totally familiar as part of intelligence testing eg filling in the next number in a sequence
-Army Beta test, designed for illiterate recruits/failed Alpha. It had seven parts and consisted of picture completion tasks.
-Individual spoken examination, If recruits failed on the other two tests, they were supposed to be given an individual spoken examination, this however rarely happened.
Everyone was given a grade from A-E

Question 5

What were 2 findings?

Answer 5

• The average mental age of white Americans was just above the edge of moronity at 13. This indicated that the country was ‘a nation of morons’.
• The average mental age of black Americans was the lowest at 10.4.

Question 6

What was 1 conclusion?

Answer 6

Gould suggested that there was a cultural bias which resulted in poor results for some individuals. He said that the Army Alpha and Beta tests required familiarity with the ‘American way’ and so immigrants were already disadvantaged.

Question 7

How does it link to the the key theme ‘Measuring differences’?

Answer 7

Tells us that it is difficult to measure differences and that researchers need to take care, not least to try to isolate the variable that they want to measure

Question 8

How does it link to the individual differences area?

Answer 8

It is reviewing an attempt to develop a way of measuring how individuals differ