1 THE VALIDITY OF ABILITY TESTS – A CASE OF OVER-INTERPRETATION?

The validity of ability tests – a case of over-interpretation? The title of this paper is not self-explanatory and so needs some immediate decoding. In current theorising about validity, which I describe later, the focus of a validity inquiry is on the inferences made from the results. So it is not the test that is valid, it is what you do with it that determines validity. This includes its impact, particularly in relation to the purpose of the test. A validity argument is about how well a test serves the purpose for which it is used. If there are multiple purposes each needs to be evaluated (AERA, 1999 Standard 1.1); a test may be more valid for one purpose than another. So it is what is inferred from ability tests that is of interest here, though for those with no interest in them there is a general issue about the naming of any test. My basic argument is that too much is inferred from scores on ability tests – they are over-interpreted. This is because the term ability carries ‘excess meaning ’ through its association with notions of fixed intelligence and IQ tests. These extra layers of interpretation reduce the validity of ability tests because they cannot support such generalisation. I will develop this argumen