Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Scores of Black and White Police Applicants

• NCJ Number: 70864
• Journal: Journal of Applied Psychology Volume: 62 Issue: 1 Dated: (1977) Pages: 57-63
• Author(s): J D Matarazzo; A N Wiens
• Date Published: 1977
• Length: 7 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (BITCH) was compared to the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) in this study in order to assess the possibility of using the BITCH as an aid in the Portland, Oreg. police selection program.

Abstract

The BITCH is a recently developed, 100-item pencil-and-paper test for measuring the intelligence of black subjects. This culture-specific test was intended to be fairer to blacks than tests currently in use. Both tests were administered to 17 black (6 female and 11 male) and 66 white (16 female and 50 male) police applicants. The mean age of the subjects was in the lower 20s, and the mean educational level was 2 1/2 years of college. The results revealed considerable overlap in the distributions of individual WAIS Full Scale Intelligence Quotient (IQ) between the black and white subjects. However, in the BITCH, white subjects were widely distributed across the possible range of performance (yielding the sort of distribution that a test should elicit), while black subjects' scores were concentrated in the upper half of the range. The BITCH means were as follows: white females, 60.9; white males, 64.1; black females, 86.7; black males 83.9. The corresponding WAIS Full Scale IQ means were 117.2, 117.8, 110.2, and 101.6 respectively. The two tests appeared to sample totally different aspects of individual differences, and a correlational analysis between the two revealed no relation between the scores. Because of this lack of concurrent validity and because the BITCH was unable to discriminate one black examinee from another, the study recommends that the BITCH should not be used as part of the selection process for blacks. However, the possibility of its use as a white measure of white applicants' awareness of black culture is suggested. Results are presented in tabular and graphic form. Footnotes and references are included.