THE USE OF IQ AND DESCRIPTIONS OF PEOPLE WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES IN THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE

Recent work has shown that there is more error in the measurement of low IQ than has previously been acknowledged, notably: poor stability, a floor effect, the Flynn effect and large disparities between different tests. In order to assess the degree to which these errors impact on scientific studies all the papers in two leading journals on intellectual disability, the Journal of Applied Research on Intellectual Disability and the American Journal on Mental Retardation, for the year 2008, were read and use of intellectual assessments noted. It was found that the majority of the papers referred to the concept of intelligence. However, only a few papers acknowledged that there may be some additional error in its measurement. Several papers simply cited IQ scores without any further information as to how they were obtained. It is argued that there is a need for published studies to give more information as to how intellectual ability is assessed, to acknowledge the errors that may occur, and to consider how such errors may have affected their results.