A Comparison of Low and Middle Socio-Economic Status Blacks on Two Measures of Intelligence

The testing of persons with highly dissimilar cultural backrounds has received increasing attention since mid-century. In America, the practical problems of cross-cultural testing has been chiefly associated with subcultures or minority cultures within the dominate culture. Havinghurst (1951), in citing cultural differences which may affect intelligence performance named social class among the major types of culture in the U.S. A review of the literature revealed that research is close to unanimous in showing that there are significant differences in intelligence performance of children and youth from different socio-economic backrounds. These findings revealed that children of higher socio-economic status (SES) levels always secure higher scores on intelligence tests than children of low SES (Eells,1951). Several investigators (Hess and Shipman, 1965; Rychman,1967) compared the performance of lower and middle class children on various tests which required abstract language and some degree of verbal expression. The major differentiating characteristic between the two socio-economic groups was general language ability which accounted for the largest portion of the variance in favor of middle class Ss. A hypothesis was fomulated which stated there would be a significant interaction of test with SES in the performance of low and middle SES Blacks on the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (BITCH) and the Shipley-Institute of Living Scale (S-ILS). The hypothesized direction was that low SES Ss would score higher than middle SES Ss on the BITCH while middle SES Ss would score higher than low SES Ss on the S-ILS. Forty-eight Black high school Ss were selected from the Douglas area of Chicago. Half of the Ss were of low SES while the other half were of middle SES. SES was determined through the use of the Hollingshead Index of Social Position. The two SES groups were matched on age and sex. Each SES group consisted of 11 males and 13 females. Half of each group was administered the BITCH first and the S-ILS second while the opposite half received the S-ILS first and the BITCH last. Both tests were administered according to the standard procedures in each manual. An analysis of variance of the T-scores based upon norms of the two tests was analyzed by a 2(SES) X2 (Sex) X2 (Age) X2 (Test) mixed factorial design. The results supported the hypothesis that a significant interaction of test with SES would be found in the performance of low SES and middle SES Blacks on the BITCH and S-ILS. The main effect of Age was found to be significant (p\u3c.01) while the main effects of Sex and SES were not significant. The interactions of SES X Test and Sex X Test were significant (p\u3c.05). The study was limited by small sample size and the fact that the regions and Ss of the sample differed from those of the norm groups of the BITCH and S-ILS. Evidence was found to support the notion that the socio-economic status of the individual is differentially related to the performance on the BITCH and S-ILS