What Does the SAT Measure?

A special issue of Journal of Intelligence (ISSN 2079-3200).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2019) | Viewed by 33056

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Psychology & Sociology, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Kingsville, TX, USA
Interests: SAT; intelligence; reading comprehension; individual differences; semantic illusions

Special Issue Information

 

Call for Commentaries

Deadline for Commentaries Submissions: 15 October 2019

In concert with Brenda Hannon, we welcome commentaries on her recent article in the Journal of Intelligence entitled “Not all factors contribute equally to European-American and Hispanic Students’ SAT scores”. For the published article, see https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3200/7/3/18 . It is not our aim to start an SAT controversy but to receive comments from experts an interested readers. The commentaries can of course be critical, but emotional and extreme language will not be accepted. Rather our goal is to create a dialogue that advances science.

Dear Colleagues,

Most institutions of higher education consider the SAT to be of “moderate” to “considerably high” importance when deciding admissions (Zwick, 2012). This fact makes the SAT to be one of, if not, the most important assessment of academic achievement for students (Hannon, 2012). Yet in spite of its importance, researchers have only begun to answer the question: What does the SAT measure? So far, it appears that a number of measures of intelligence are strong predictors of the SAT, with correlations that typically range from .40 to .80; see Frey and Detterman (2004) and Hannon (2016) for examples. It also appears that measures of non-intelligence factors, such as metacognitive awareness, performance avoidance, and test anxiety are unique predictors of SAT scores (Hannon, 2016). However, what about other factors, such as self-efficacy, locus of control, or socioeconomic status? How do intelligence and non-intelligence measures predict SAT performance for different ethnic groups, such as Hispanics, African Americans, or Asians? Finally, how do intelligence and non-intelligence measures predict SAT performance for males versus females? In this symposium, contributors will further explore what the SAT is measuring by determining the relative contributions of intelligence and non-intelligence measures to SAT scores. Use of special populations is welcome.

Prof. Dr. Brenda Hannon
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • SAT
  • intelligence
  • individual differences
  • construct

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 639 KiB  
Article
Not All Factors Contribute Equally to European-American and Hispanic Students’ SAT Scores
by Brenda Hannon
J. Intell. 2019, 7(3), 18; https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence7030018 - 1 Aug 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 7062
Abstract
This exploratory study shows that the contributions of cognitive, metacognitive awareness, performance avoidance, test anxiety, and socioeconomic family background factors to SAT scores (i.e., overall SAT, SAT-V, SAT-M) may vary as a function of ethnicity (i.e., European-American, Hispanic). Four hundred and fifty-seven students, [...] Read more.
This exploratory study shows that the contributions of cognitive, metacognitive awareness, performance avoidance, test anxiety, and socioeconomic family background factors to SAT scores (i.e., overall SAT, SAT-V, SAT-M) may vary as a function of ethnicity (i.e., European-American, Hispanic). Four hundred and fifty-seven students, 282 European-American and 175 Hispanic, completed multiple measures of cognitive, metacognitive awareness, social/personality (i.e., test anxiety, performance avoidance, academic self-efficacy), and socioeconomic family background factors, which were used in regression analyses predicting overall SAT, SAT-V, and SAT-M scores. The results show that most factors contributed significantly to overall SAT, SAT-M, and SAT-V scores. In addition, the ethnicity X test anxiety interaction was significant for all three SAT measures, a finding that suggests ethnic differences in the contributions of test anxiety to overall SAT, SAT-M, and SAT-V scores. For European-American students, test anxiety had no influence on overall SAT and SAT-M scores, whereas for Hispanic students test anxiety had a negative influence on overall SAT and SAT-M scores. For SAT-V scores, interpreting the ethnicity X test anxiety interaction was more complicated because both the significant main effect of test anxiety and the ethnicity X test anxiety interaction must be interpreted together. Whereas test anxiety negatively influenced European-Americans’ SAT-V scores, this negative influence was less than the influence it had on Hispanic students’ SAT-V scores. Indeed, for Hispanic students with high test anxiety, this negative influence was profound. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that any theory explaining the SAT may need to take into account multiple predictors as well as the possibility that the contributions of these predictors may vary as a function of ethnicity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue What Does the SAT Measure?)
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Review

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7 pages, 236 KiB  
Review
What We Know, Are Still Getting Wrong, and Have Yet to Learn about the Relationships among the SAT, Intelligence and Achievement
by Meredith C. Frey
J. Intell. 2019, 7(4), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence7040026 - 2 Dec 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 20328
Abstract
Fifteen years ago, Frey and Detterman established that the SAT (and later, with Koenig, the ACT) was substantially correlated with measures of general cognitive ability and could be used as a proxy measure for intelligence (Frey and Detterman, 2004; Koenig, Frey, and Detterman, [...] Read more.
Fifteen years ago, Frey and Detterman established that the SAT (and later, with Koenig, the ACT) was substantially correlated with measures of general cognitive ability and could be used as a proxy measure for intelligence (Frey and Detterman, 2004; Koenig, Frey, and Detterman, 2008). Since that finding, replicated many times and cited extensively in the literature, myths about the SAT, intelligence, and academic achievement continue to spread in popular domains, online, and in some academic administrators. This paper reviews the available evidence about the relationships among the SAT, intelligence, and academic achievement, dispels common myths about the SAT, and points to promising future directions for research in the prediction of academic achievement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue What Does the SAT Measure?)

Other

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7 pages, 907 KiB  
Commentary
The Role of Non-Cognitive Factors in the SAT Remains Unclear: A Commentary on Hannon (2019)
by Andrew R. A. Conway and Han Hao
J. Intell. 2020, 8(2), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence8020015 - 13 Apr 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4769
Abstract
In the current issue of the Journal of Intelligence, Hannon (2019) reports a novel and intriguing pattern of results that could be interpreted as evidence that the SAT is biased against Hispanic students. Specifically, Hannon’s analyses suggest that non-cognitive factors, such as [...] Read more.
In the current issue of the Journal of Intelligence, Hannon (2019) reports a novel and intriguing pattern of results that could be interpreted as evidence that the SAT is biased against Hispanic students. Specifically, Hannon’s analyses suggest that non-cognitive factors, such as test anxiety, contribute to SAT performance and the impact of test anxiety on the SAT is stronger among Hispanic students than European-American students. Importantly, this pattern of results was observed after controlling for individual differences in cognitive abilities. We argue that there are multiple issues with Hannon’s investigation and interpretation. For instance, Hannon did not include an adequate number or variety of measures of cognitive ability. In addition, the measure of test anxiety was a retrospective self-report survey on evaluated anxiety rather than a direct measure of situational test anxiety associated with the SAT. Based on these and other observations, we conclude that Hannon’s current results do not provide sufficient evidence to suggest that non-cognitive factors play a significant role in the SAT or that they impact European-American and Hispanic students differently. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue What Does the SAT Measure?)
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