Elund comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

88 Post author: Yvain 26 October 2014 06:05PM

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Comment author: Elund 26 October 2014 08:37:04AM 6 points [-]

My worry is that taking an IQ test online (even timed with reliable questions) cannot duplicate the exact same experience as taking an IQ test in a proctored setting. There are likely to be more confounding factors that throw off the scores relative to proctored tests, since the environments cannot be as strictly controlled.

Comment author: kuudes 27 October 2014 02:11:00AM 3 points [-]

Well yes. Mainly including a couple of testlets would alleviate the self-test worry. We could infer the population average IQ relative to those testlets' hardness, which could confirm or disprove the self-reported IQ accuracy. I have understood that there has been some amount of doubt related to self reporting of IQ on the census here.

Comment author: Elund 27 October 2014 04:05:23AM *  4 points [-]

Sure, if you gave the same test to a representative sample of LWers and to a representative sample of the general population, you could calibrate IQ scores across them. I still expect it to be less reliable than proctored IQ tests though, not because I'm worried about people lying about their scores, but because of a higher incidence of confounding factors such as distracting noises, internet connection failures, and even the presence of daylight from a nearby window.

http://h-m-g.com/projects/daylighting/publicity%20daylighting.htm

I suppose it might be interesting to include some IQ questions anyway, as it might still turn up some interesting results. We'd just have to keep the limitations in mind while analyzing the results.