Group Examination Alpha
date: label: date made
content: 1918
name: label: maker
content: United States Army. Medical Department. Division of Psychology
notes: label: Description
content: During World War I, the U.S. Army needed to sort out the thousands of recruits arriving at training camps. Psychologists claimed that their young science offered an objective, efficient way to classify men, weeding out the mentally unfit. Intelligence tests available at the time had been designed for children, given individually, and in many cases were unstandardized. No one knew precisely what they measured or how these measurements related to military performance. Nonetheless, over 1,700,000 American soldiers took intelligence tests during the war.
label: Description
content: Group Examination Alpha was for men who could read English. It tested the ability to follow oral directions, arithmetic, vocabulary, pattern recognition, general information, and “common sense.”
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: District of Columbia, Washington
label: owner, prior
content: United States: Pennsylvania, Lower Merion Township, Bryn Mawr
topic: label: related event
content: World War I
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
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content: Health & Medicine
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content: Military
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content: Science & Mathematics
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content: Modern Medicine and the Great War
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1990.0334.01
label: catalog number
content: 1990.0334.01
label: accession number
content: 1990.0334
objectType: label: Object Name
content: psychological test
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: .1 cm x 21.3 cm x 28 cm; 1/32 in x 8 3/8 in x 11 1/32 in