From: julie@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu (Julie Wright)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Observations from male studentnt
Date: 1 Oct 92 04:50:17 GMT
	<JULIE.92Sep30113950@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu>
	<1992Sep30.185259.28364@netcom.com>
Organization: The Cultural Elite

payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:
>julie@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu (Julie Wright) writes:

["Rich" indicates payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne).]
["Hans" indicates hans@Software.Mitel.COM (Hans Johnsen).]
["John" indicates zorro@picasso.ocis.temple.edu (John Grabowski).] 

>>[discussion of "intelligence tests" (whatever that means, here) being used
>>to evaluate a person's qualifications for a job, etc.]

*John said:*
If they are not worth much to measure intelligence (and I personally agree
that they're not), then why are they used so much?  And why are they
"overlooked" by admissions officers at most universities when it comes to
blacks and Hispanics?  

*Then Hans said:*
The real problem with intelligence tests is that they are poor cross
cultural predictors of intelligence, therefore this type of policy is
(on the surface) quite reasonable. The problem is that race and culture,
while related, are not equivalent.

*Then Rich said:*
Wait a minute, I though SAT scores were used. I have been in many colleges
and universities, and never took an IQ test. And my understanding is that
SAT scores do correlate well with college/university performance.
What am I missing here?

*Then I (Julie) said:*
>>	I think they *are* talking about SATs and the like, although it
>>is worth noting that the SAT is not supposed to be an intelligence test
>>like the IQ test(s?).  

>That -was- my point.  

	Yes, Rich, I know that.  I was *agreeing* and, I thought, clarifying
your point that SATs are not only not IQ tests, they aren't even intelligence
tests.  Believe it or not, I sometimes agree with people who don't identify
themselves as feminists...
 
>>	I also understood that SAT scores correlated at least somewhat
>>with college/university performance.  However, it is apparently a consistent
>>pattern that girls score lower on SATs (I think this is total score; not
>>sure whether girls do better on the verbal section or not) than boys do,
>>and yet they get better grades in college on average than boys do. 

>Now this I have problems understanding. The SAT is just another test where
>students "fill[ing] in little circles in answer to trivial questions", is
>it not? So how then could it undervalue/overvalue any group?

	I haven't the foggiest idea why it undervalues female students'
future academic performance or overvalues male students'.  I don't think
anyone can say for sure, or they'd fix the thing and make a lot more money,
because colleges want more accurate predictions.  So I have problems
understanding it too.  I also have problems understanding why taking a
timed multiple choice test gives a guide to how well you'll do in college
courses.  But I'm willing to accept that there's a demonstrated statistical
correlation (as there is with high school grades) between performance
on the SAT and performance in college.  The SAT is _used_ because of this
statistical correlation, not to test whether or not you know what misogynist
means or whether you can answer a bunch of math questions fast.  So if
it's statistically flawed in some noticeable way, admissions officers
will (on average) get a group of students who perform better academically 
if they correct for this skew. 
	I have full confidence that the ETS people are not deliberately making
female students look bad, and I haven't the faintest idea of whether
the test would be a better predictor if only women wrote it (say).  
I'm not grinding a political ax here; I have nothing against the
ETS personally; but they haven't got all the kinks worked out, and the
people using the tests as a predictor adjust for that.

>BTW, your use of the term "girls" would be flame-fodder had I used it.

	What am I supposed to say to this?  Shall I point out that if I'd
described a bunch of 16-year-olds as women and men, people would have
criticized me  (probably correctly!) for giving in to that notorious force
which so dominates all of our lives, Political Correctness?  Shall I 
*deny* that you would have been flamed for referring to male and female
high school students, in the same paragraph, as boys and girls?  (You
won't believe that one anyway, and there's no way I can prove it, so
what's the point?)  Shall I point out that if, in the future, I call
them "male and female students" and dodge the issue, it's because I'm
trying to avoid getting stupid flames from *you*, not those silly 
feminists?  I'm not quite sure which reaction you were looking for;
choose whichever one you think is most unreasonable, and we can quibble
about it for about three weeks.  Loads o' fun.

>>I
>>don't know whether the same pattern applies to blacks and Hispanics -- that
>>SATs are not an ideal predictor to evaluate their abilities and potential
>>in college compared to WASPs, say -- but it certainly wouldn't surprise
>>me to find out that that's the reason admissions officers act as described
>>above, as Hans seems to indicate.  

>If the SAT deals with academic subjects taught in schools only, then how
>can group performance be a measure of bias? Why would one expect every
>group to do equally as well? This is just as unfounded as assuming that
>some group (fill in your favorite) will naturally do better. 

	I'm *not* assuming all groups will or should do equally well.  I'm 
*telling* you, in the case of male vs. female groups, and guessing, in the 
case of minority-group-of-your-choice students, that the SAT isn't as good a 
predictor as it is within a group of all female white students, for 
example.  I never claimed to know why it isn't as good a predictor, and
I really don't care much.  The point is, if one is using a test because
of a *statistical* correlation between performance on that test and 
performance in college, and the test has a *statistical* pattern of
overrating men or underrating women, one will get better *statistical*
results if one takes this into account.  I'm *not* saying I expect any
fair test to end up with females and males performing equally, and any
test that doesn't give this result is unfair.  I'M TELLING YOU THE THING
DOESN'T WORK PERFECTLY!  Big surprise!  
	It really pisses me off that you're twisting my words around 
like that.  It seems like you expected me to say one thing, and assumed
I was saying it, without reading very closely.  

>>	The point is, if SATs are being used as a predictor of future 
>>performance because there's a high statistical correlation between SAT
>>scores and future performance, rather than because colleges demand that
>>their students be talented at filling in little circles in answer to 
>>trivial questions, and if SATs are found to underrate the future performance
>>of girls/black students/whoever, it seems reasonable to make some corrections
>>in the way the tests are evaluated.  

	I like that paragraph better than the stuff I've said today; 
it was shorter.  But I hope I've at least made my meaning clear to you with 
all the verbiage above.

>What I would like for you to explain to me how one jumps from 'different
>group performance' to 'underrates certain groups'. I do not see that the
>first implies the second. I would imagine that the Asian group (is that
>allowed?) does better than the WASP group. If this is the case (I am
>reasonably certain that it is), would you then say that the WASP group is
>underrated?

	Aargh.  I am not the one "jumping" here.  I didn't say it underrated
female students because they did worse on the SAT.  I said it underrated
them because they did worse on the SAT and *yet* did better in college.
If Asians do better on the SAT than WASPs and also get better grades in
college than WASPs, WASPs' future academic performance has not been under-
estimated, it's been correctly estimated.  (Again, all these statements
apply to the *average* performance of a group, and may not be fair to
individuals, as, indeed, any admissions criterion may not.)

>Are people (of any stripe) who fail tests underrated? 
	If striped people fail tests, and the tests are an ideal way
to evaluate striped individuals *and* nonstriped individuals, they are 
not underrated.  OK?  
	It's pretty damn hard to make an infallible test.  People just
do the best they can.

>Is it possible to note any difference at all and not claim bias? 
	Yes.  Again, I am not claiming SAT results are skewed *just*
because female students do worse on average.  I'm saying they're skewed
because the SAT is not functioning adequately as a predictor in this
way.  

>>  It would be terrific if someone would
>>make a test that could perfectly predict future performance,or ability,
>>or something, but since the people at ETS are not deities, they haven't
>>managed to do that.  Admissions officers are presumably doing the best
>>they can to evaluate the information they're given in order to try to get
>>the best possible class (not that THEY'RE infallible either), and if they
>>went strictly by SATs, they'd screen out a lot of girls who would have done
>>better in college than the boys they would let in.  (And keep in mind that
>>SATs are hardly the only thing they evaluate.)

	Jesus.  Why am I wasting my time repeating myself?  It's all right
here in the original post; you just assumed I was saying something
different, and didn't bother to read what I said.

>So what other factors are involved?
	Grades, activities, all that crap.  I probably shouldn't have 
brought it up; I didn't mean to get into it.  I just meant to indicate
that admissions officers have other material to look at in evaluating
applicants, and if female students happened to be stronger than male
students in those areas, yet weaker in the SATs, the end result of the
admission process would be that the female admittees had lower SATs
and higher grades/outside activity performance/whatever than the male
admittees.  I don't know whether that's an accurate description of what
happens, but we only hear avg. SATs for male and female admittees (since
they're the easiest thing to report), and that might not give the whole
picture.  This is speculation on my part about one *possibility*, and
not meant to indicate that I know or even think that that's what's going
on.  
 
>And you are also assuming the same
>number of male and female applicants above. If there are more male applicants,
>then they will probably get more admitted. And as I understand it, this is
>the case. 

	No, I was not assuming the same number of male and female applicants
above.  I *never* said admissions would be fairer if colleges let in the
same number of men and women, and I don't believe it to be true.

>Rich
>payner@netcom.com

--- Julie