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Men, women, and iq: setting the record straight, what james flynn's data actually shows..

Posted July 20, 2012 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

A recent article in The Telegraph includes the following quote from philosopher and IQ researcher James Flynn :

"In the last 100 years the IQ scores of both men and women have risen, but women's have risen faster."

To further elucidate the matter, they consult Helena Jamison, a 33-year-old consultant who studied English literature at Cambridge:

"I think women probably always knew deep down that they were the more intelligent ones — but as the gentler sex we were quiet about it and let men continue to believe they ruled the world."

Can we stop this madness please ?

Today I was treated to a talk from James Flynn in Cambridge, England. Flynn is one of my intellectual heroes. I always enjoy his talks, because they are highly provocative and thoughtful. This talk was no exception. I'll give a quick recap for those of you interested in Flynn's actual data and intepretations.

Flynn looked at IQ scores from ages 14-18 and found 5 modern states where he could get standardization samples with at least 500 people of each gender . The states he looked at were Australia, New Zealand, White South Africa, Estonia, and Argentina. It was important that he used standardization samples because that means that the IQ researchers made an effort to get as representative a sample as possible.

Analyzing those 5 datasets and throwing away all of the older studies from the prior generation (prior to 1982), he compared men and women on the Raven's Progressive Matrices test , a test of abstract, logical reasoning. Setting the male score at 100, Flynn found that women scored the lowest in Australia (99.5), but in the other 4 nations Raven's scores varied from 100.5 to 101.5.

After presenting this data, he noted:

"So they certainly equaled men, and perhaps were slightly above. This has been distorted in the news of my saying that women are incredibly more intelligent than men. As you can see, this somewhat goes beyond what was claimed."

The audience chuckled. Flynn then goes on make the argument that in every country in which women have been allowed full entry into modernity in terms of educational opportunities, they are now matching men on Raven's. As for the fraction of a point advantage in IQ for women:

"I suspect that is a characterological trait. They are also more focused in the testing room just as they are more focused in the classroom. So my conclusion is the sexes on the Raven's is probably dead equal for cognitive factors and there is a very slight female advantage for characterological traits. This is mere extrapolation from what happens at secondary school. You would expect a little female advantage because of temperamental differences."

Flynn notes that in his class at the University of Otago, "2/3rd of the students are women, and 2/3rd of the late essays are men." He says this is a universal phenomenon. He also notes that "I'm not saying the genders are equal. They're equal in their ability to deal with using logic on the abstract problems of Raven's." He points out that if you try to intentionally create a gender-neutral IQ test by throwing out items that favor one gender over the other, you find that you can't eliminate a female verbal advantage and a male advantage for visual-spatial items.

Then Flynn presents data on the Black-White IQ gap in the United States. He shows that since 1972, Black Americans have gained 5 points over Whites. But strikingly, the IQ gap widens systematically every few years. In other words, the rich still get richer in America, and the poor still get poorer. Here's his data:

Black-White difference in 1972

Age 4 8 12 16 20 24

-10 -12.4 -14.8 -17.2 -19.6 -22.0

Black-White difference in 2002

-5 -7.5 -9.8 -12.2 -14.6 -17

In 1972, at the age of 4, there was a 10 point IQ difference between blacks and whites on average in the United States. In 2002, the gap had narrowed by 5 points, but there was still a 5 point difference at age 4. By the age of 24, the gap widened to a 17 point difference. This is better than the 22 point difference found in 1972 for age 24, but it's still quite alarming.

Flynn doesn't believe that blacks and whites are born with differences in intelligence. As he rightly points out, it wasn't that long ago that some psychologists were arguing that Irish immigrants in the United States were genetically inferior. But when Irish Americans began to invest in education , they completely closed the gap. Instead, Flynn argues that these trends become cumulative, and problems are already evident in preschool. He proposes some environmental explanations, including differences in attitudes toward academic achievement.

He says he is fully aware of the controversial nature of his research and his ideas but thinks these are serious issues that require rigorous investigation. He believes that IQ trends show us interesting social trends. He told the audience that he has suggested half a dozen studies that could shed light on this issue,

"But you cannot say these things. They are forbidden. Which means of course we go on in ignorance of what actually causes group differences. Which means we can't provide any solutions. When you turn your back on reality you lose the ability to manipulate reality. One would think that is self-evident...I didn't go into this to not try to find the truth."

I have immense respect for Flynn, who clearly is interested in societal progress and the reduction of inequalities around the world. After the talk, I asked Flynn if he'd like me to write a blog post setting the record straight about his data. He said he'd really appreciate that, because when he was interviewed, the interviewer kept asking him leading questions about women and multitasking, clearly wanting to get a particular answer out of him.

This really bugs me. I wish we would stop with all the petty gender wars that have no actual basis in fact and address really significant issues. We still have a long way to go in terms of racial equality in the United States. Hopefully, Flynn's startling data will open up a much-needed discussion. Everything in Flynn's talk is also discussed in his new book, Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century . I highly recommend it if you're interested in hearing his views on these important issues rather than relying on the media.

Scott Barry Kaufman is a humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential.

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Mounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including with significant drops in IQ scores

Chief of Research and Development, VA St. Louis Health Care System. Clinical Epidemiologist, Washington University in St. Louis

Disclosure statement

Ziyad Al-Aly receives funding from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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From the very early days of the pandemic, brain fog emerged as a significant health condition that many experience after COVID-19.

Brain fog is a colloquial term that describes a state of mental sluggishness or lack of clarity and haziness that makes it difficult to concentrate, remember things and think clearly.

Fast-forward four years and there is now abundant evidence that being infected with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – can affect brain health in many ways .

In addition to brain fog, COVID-19 can lead to an array of problems , including headaches, seizure disorders, strokes, sleep problems, and tingling and paralysis of the nerves, as well as several mental health disorders .

A large and growing body of evidence amassed throughout the pandemic details the many ways that COVID-19 leaves an indelible mark on the brain. But the specific pathways by which the virus does so are still being elucidated, and curative treatments are nonexistent.

Now, two new studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine shed further light on the profound toll of COVID-19 on cognitive health .

I am a physician scientist , and I have been devoted to studying long COVID since early patient reports about this condition – even before the term “long COVID” was coined. I have testified before the U.S. Senate as an expert witness on long COVID and have published extensively on this topic.

How COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain

Here are some of the most important studies to date documenting how COVID-19 affects brain health:

Large epidemiological analyses showed that people who had COVID-19 were at an increased risk of cognitive deficits , such as memory problems.

Imaging studies done in people before and after their COVID-19 infections show shrinkage of brain volume and altered brain structure after infection .

A study of people with mild to moderate COVID-19 showed significant prolonged inflammation of the brain and changes that are commensurate with seven years of brain aging .

Severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization or intensive care may result in cognitive deficits and other brain damage that are equivalent to 20 years of aging .

Laboratory experiments in human and mouse brain organoids designed to emulate changes in the human brain showed that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers the fusion of brain cells . This effectively short-circuits brain electrical activity and compromises function.

Autopsy studies of people who had severe COVID-19 but died months later from other causes showed that the virus was still present in brain tissue . This provides evidence that contrary to its name, SARS-CoV-2 is not only a respiratory virus, but it can also enter the brain in some individuals. But whether the persistence of the virus in brain tissue is driving some of the brain problems seen in people who have had COVID-19 is not yet clear.

Studies show that even when the virus is mild and exclusively confined to the lungs, it can still provoke inflammation in the brain and impair brain cells’ ability to regenerate .

COVID-19 can also disrupt the blood brain barrier , the shield that protects the nervous system – which is the control and command center of our bodies – making it “leaky.” Studies using imaging to assess the brains of people hospitalized with COVID-19 showed disrupted or leaky blood brain barriers in those who experienced brain fog.

A large preliminary analysis pooling together data from 11 studies encompassing almost 1 million people with COVID-19 and more than 6 million uninfected individuals showed that COVID-19 increased the risk of development of new-onset dementia in people older than 60 years of age.

Drops in IQ

Most recently, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed cognitive abilities such as memory, planning and spatial reasoning in nearly 113,000 people who had previously had COVID-19. The researchers found that those who had been infected had significant deficits in memory and executive task performance.

This decline was evident among those infected in the early phase of the pandemic and those infected when the delta and omicron variants were dominant. These findings show that the risk of cognitive decline did not abate as the pandemic virus evolved from the ancestral strain to omicron.

In the same study, those who had mild and resolved COVID-19 showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ. In comparison, those with unresolved persistent symptoms, such as people with persistent shortness of breath or fatigue, had a six-point loss in IQ. Those who had been admitted to the intensive care unit for COVID-19 had a nine-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with the virus contributed an additional two-point loss in IQ, as compared with no reinfection.

Generally the average IQ is about 100. An IQ above 130 indicates a highly gifted individual, while an IQ below 70 generally indicates a level of intellectual disability that may require significant societal support.

To put the finding of the New England Journal of Medicine study into perspective, I estimate that a three-point downward shift in IQ would increase the number of U.S. adults with an IQ less than 70 from 4.7 million to 7.5 million – an increase of 2.8 million adults with a level of cognitive impairment that requires significant societal support.

Another study in the same issue of the New England Journal of Medicine involved more than 100,000 Norwegians between March 2020 and April 2023. It documented worse memory function at several time points up to 36 months following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.

Parsing the implications

Taken together, these studies show that COVID-19 poses a serious risk to brain health, even in mild cases, and the effects are now being revealed at the population level.

A recent analysis of the U.S. Current Population Survey showed that after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional 1 million working-age Americans reported having “serious difficulty” remembering, concentrating or making decisions than at any time in the preceding 15 years. Most disconcertingly, this was mostly driven by younger adults between the ages of 18 to 44.

Data from the European Union shows a similar trend – in 2022, 15% of people in the EU reported memory and concentration issues .

Looking ahead, it will be critical to identify who is most at risk. A better understanding is also needed of how these trends might affect the educational attainment of children and young adults and the economic productivity of working-age adults. And the extent to which these shifts will influence the epidemiology of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is also not clear.

The growing body of research now confirms that COVID-19 should be considered a virus with a significant impact on the brain. The implications are far-reaching, from individuals experiencing cognitive struggles to the potential impact on populations and the economy.

Lifting the fog on the true causes behind these cognitive impairments, including brain fog, will require years if not decades of concerted efforts by researchers across the globe. And unfortunately, nearly everyone is a test case in this unprecedented global undertaking.

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Americans’ IQ scores are lower in some areas, higher in one

• Feinberg School of Medicine

IQ scores have substantially increased from 1932 through the 20th century, with differences ranging from three to five IQ points per decade, according to a phenomenon known as the “Flynn effect.”

But a new study from Northwestern University has found evidence of a reverse “Flynn effect” in a large U.S. sample between 2006 and 2018 in every category except one. For the reverse Flynn effect, there were consistent negative slopes for three out of the four cognitive domains.

Ability scores of verbal reasoning (logic, vocabulary), matrix reasoning (visual problem solving, analogies), and letter and number series (computational/mathematical) dropped during the study period, but scores of 3D rotation (spatial reasoning) generally increased from 2011 to 2018, the study found. Composite ability scores (single scores derived from multiple pieces of information) were also lower for more recent samples. The differences in scores were present regardless of age, education or gender.

If all the scores were going in the same direction, you could make a nice little narrative about it, but that’s not the case.”

Despite the decline in scores, corresponding study author Elizabeth Dworak said she doesn’t want people to read these findings and think, “Americans are getting less intelligent.”

“It doesn’t mean their mental ability is lower or higher; it’s just a difference in scores that are favoring older or newer samples,” said Dworak, a research assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It could just be that they’re getting worse at taking tests or specifically worse at taking these kinds of tests.”

The study was published earlier this month in the journal Intelligence .

The scientists used the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment (SAPA) Project , a free survey-based online personality test that provides test-takers feedback on 27 temperament traits (e.g. adaptability, impulsivity, anxiety, humor) and their ability scores. The study examined survey responses from 394,378 Americans between 2006 to 2018 to examine if cognitive ability scores changed within the U.S. in those 13 years.

A smaller subset of participants (303,540) was recruited between 2011 and 2018. The 3D rotation data only exists for those who took the survey between 2011 and 2018.

Why the decline in IQ scores?

While the study didn’t examine the reason for the decline in IQ scores, Dworak said there is no shortage of theories in the scientific community, including poor nutrition, worsening health, media exposures and changes to education.

“There’s debate about what’s causing it, but not every domain is going down; one of them is going up,” Dworak said. “If all the scores were going in the same direction, you could make a nice little narrative about it, but that’s not the case. We need to do more to dig into it.”

To that end, Dworak and her colleagues are currently trying to access a dataset that contains 40 years of data to conduct a follow-up study.

A shift in perceived values in society also might have affected scores, Dworak said.

“If you’re thinking about what society cares about and what it’s emphasizing and reinforcing every day, there’s a possibility of that being reflected in performance on an ability test,” Dworak said.

She gave the example that there’s been more emphasis on STEM education in recent decades, but does that mean other areas, like abstract reasoning, are receiving less attention in schools? 

Another factor could be due to a decline in motivation, Dworak said. Because the SAPA Project is advertised as a personality survey, individuals seeking out the test may be more engaged with sections related to measuring temperament and less engaged with sections that are seemingly unrelated to personality.

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March 28, 2023

I Gave ChatGPT an IQ Test. Here’s What I Discovered

The chatbot was the ideal test taker—it exhibited no trace of test anxiety, poor concentration or lack of effort. And what about that IQ score?

By Eka Roivainen

Thomas Fuchs

ChatGPT is the first nonhuman subject I have ever tested.

In my work as a clinical psychologist, I assess the cognitive skills of human patients using standardized intelligence tests. So I was immediately intrigued after reading the many recent articles describing ChatGPT as having impressive humanlike skills. It writes academic essays and fairy tales, tells jokes, explains scientific concepts and composes and debugs computer code. Knowing all this made me curious to see how smart ChatGPT is by human standards , and I set about to test the chatbot.

My first impressions were quite favorable. ChatGPT was almost an ideal test taker, with a commendable test-taking attitude. It doesn’t show test anxiety, poor concentration or lack of effort. Nor did it express uninvited, skeptical comments about intelligence tests and testers like myself.

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Without need for any preparation—no verbal introductions necessary for the testing protocol—I copied the exact questions from the test and presented them to the chatbot in the computer. The test in question is the most commonly used IQ test, the Wechsler adult intelligence scale (WAIS) . I used the third edition of the WAIS that consists of six verbal and five nonverbal subtests that make up the Verbal IQ and Performance IQ components, respectively. The global Full Scale IQ measure is based on scores from all 11 subtests. The mean IQ is set at 100 points , and the standard deviation of the points on the testing scale is 15, meaning that the smartest 10 percent and 1 percent of the population have IQs of 120 and 133, respectively.

It was possible to test ChatGPT because five of the subtests on the Verbal IQ scale—Vocabulary, Similarities, Comprehension, Information and Arithmetic—can be presented in written form. A sixth subtest of the Verbal IQ scale is Digit Span, which measures short-term memory, and cannot be administered to the chatbot, given its lack of the relevant neural circuitry that briefly stores information like a name or number.

I started the testing process with the Vocabulary subtest as I expected it to be easy for the chatbot, which is trained on vast amounts of online texts. This subtest measures word knowledge and verbal concept formation, and a typical instruction might read: “Tell me what ‘gadget’ means.”

ChatGPT aced it, giving answers that were often highly detailed and comprehensive in scope and which exceeded the criteria for correct answers indicated in the test manual. In scoring, one point would be given for a thing like my phone in defining a gadget and two points for the more detailed: a small device or tool for a specific task . ChatGPT’s answers received the full two points.

The chatbot also performed well on the Similarities and Information subtests, reaching the maximum attainable scores. The Information subtest is a test of general knowledge and reflects intellectual curiosity, level of education and ability to learn and remember facts. A typical question might be: “What is the capital of Ukraine?” The Similarities subtest measures abstract reasoning and concept formation skills. A question might read: “In what way are Harry Potter and Bugs Bunny alike?” In this subtest, the chatbot’s tendency to give very detailed, show-offy answers started to irritate me and the “stop generating response” button of the test software interface turned out to be useful. (Here’s what I mean about how the bot tends to flaunt itself: The essential similarity of Harry Potter and Bugs Bunny relates to the fact that they are both fictional characters. There was really no need for ChatGPT to compare their complete histories of adventures, friends and enemies.)

On general comprehension, ChatGPT answered correctly questions typically posed in this form: “If your TV set catches fire, what should you do?” As expected, the chatbot solved all the arithmetic problems it received—ploughing through questions that required, say, taking the average of three numbers.

So what finally did it score overall? Estimated on the basis of five subtests, the Verbal IQ of the ChatGPT was 155, superior to 99.9 percent of the test takers who make up the American WAIS III standardization sample of 2,450 people. As the chatbot lacks the requisite eyes, ears and hands, it is not able to take WAIS’s nonverbal subtests. But the Verbal IQ and Full Scale IQ scales are highly correlated in the standardization sample, so ChatGPT appears to be very intelligent by any human standards.

In the WAIS standardization sample, mean Verbal IQ among college-educated Americans was 113 and 5 percent had a score of 132 or superior. I myself was tested by a peer at college and did not quite reach the level of ChatGPT (mainly a result of my very brief answers lacking detail).

So are the jobs of clinical psychologists and other professionals threatened by AI? I hope not quite yet . Despite its high IQ, ChatGPT is known to fail tasks that require real humanlike reasoning or an understanding of the physical and social world. ChatGPT easily fails at obvious riddles, such as “What is the first name of the father of Sebastian’s children?” (ChatGPT on March 21: I’m sorry, I cannot answer this question as I do not have enough context to identify which Sebastian you are referring to.) It seems that ChatGPT fails to reason logically and tries to rely on its vast database of “Sebastian” facts mentioned in online texts.

“Intelligence is what intelligence tests measure” is a classical if overly self-evident definition of intelligence, stemming from a 1923 article by a pioneer of cognitive psychology, Edwin Boring. This definition is based on the observation that skills on seemingly diverse tasks such as solving puzzles, defining words, memorizing digits and spotting missing items in pictures are highly correlated. The developer of a statistical method called factor analysis, Charles Spearman, concluded in 1904 that a general factor of intelligence, called a g factor, must underlie the concordance of measurements for varying human cognitive skills. IQ tests such as WAIS are based on this hypothesis. However, the very high Verbal IQ of ChatGPT combined with its amusing failures means trouble for Boring’s definition and indicates there are aspects of intelligence that cannot be measured by IQ tests alone. Perhaps my test-skeptic patients have been right all along.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of  Scientific American.

A version of this article with the title “AI’s IQ” was adapted for inclusion in the July/August 2023 issue of Scientific American.

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• Frontiers - The Role of Intelligence Quotient and Emotional Intelligence in Cognitive Control Processes
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• MedicineNet - How Do I Know My IQ? IQ Ranges & Average Scores
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IQ , (from “intelligence quotient”), a number used to express the relative intelligence of a person. It is one of many intelligence tests .

IQ was originally computed by taking the ratio of mental age to chronological (physical) age and multiplying by 100. Thus, if a 10-year-old child had a mental age of 12 (that is, performed on the test at the level of an average 12-year-old), the child was assigned an IQ of 12 / 10 × 100, or 120. If the 10-year-old had a mental age of 8, the child’s IQ would be 8 / 10 × 100, or 80. Based on this calculation, a score of 100—where the mental age equals the chronological age—would be average. Few tests continue to involve the computation of mental ages. See also Lewis Terman ; Alfred Binet .

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What Is an IQ Test?

It can tell you your intellectual potential, but take it with a grain of salt

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Sean Gladwell / Getty Images

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An IQ test, short for "intelligence quotient", is an assessment that measures a range of cognitive abilities and provides a score that is intended to serve as a measure of an individual's intellectual abilities and potential. IQ tests are among the most administered psychological tests.

That being said, while IQ scores can determine intellectual potential or someone's expected capabilities, it doesn't necessarily mean they're smart. Intelligence comes from so many different emotional and experiential places there is no one test to determine how smart someone is. IQ tests are helpful for some things—like determining disability—and less so for others.

To understand what these scores truly mean, it is essential to look at exactly how these test scores are calculated. Today, many IQ tests are standardized, and scores are derived by comparing individual performance against the norm for people in that age group.

While many tests utilize similar methods to derive their scores, it is also important to note that each IQ test is different. Additionally, scoring methods may not be the same from one test to another.

IQ is a type of standard score that indicates how far above, or how far below, his/her peer group an individual stands in mental ability" according to Mensa International, an organization for people scoring in the top 2% for IQ.

Types of IQ Tests

There are several different intelligence tests in existence and their content can vary considerably. Some are used for adults, but many are specifically designed to be administered to children.

Some commonly used intelligence tests include:

• Cognitive Assessment System
• Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children
• Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
• Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test
• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
• Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
• Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities

Which IQ test is best or more accurate? Unfortunately, there is no consensus on this. Instead, some suggest that each test measures a different notion of intelligence , thus IQ test scores can vary depending on what is being measured and the test being taken.

What are they used for?

IQ tests can be used for a wide range of purposes, including:

• Educational assessment and placement
• Assessment and diagnosis of intellectual disability
• Cognitive research
• Job candidate evaluation
• Assessing cognitive abilities including memory , speed, and attention

Modern intelligence tests often focus on abilities such as mathematical skills, memory, spatial perception, and language abilities. The capacity to see relationships, solve problems , and remember information are important components of intelligence, so these are often the skills on which IQ tests focus.

Impact of IQ Testing

IQ can have an impact on different areas of life, including school and work. High scores are often associated with higher achievement in school, while lower scores may be linked to some form of intellectual disability.

The following is a rough breakdown of various IQ score ranges. Some tests present scores differently and with differing interpretations of what those scores might mean.

Intelligence test scores typically follow what is known as a normal distribution, or a bell-shaped curve in which most scores lie near or around the average IQ test score . For example, the majority of scores (about 68%) on the Wechsler IQ tests tend to lie between plus 15 or minus 15 points from the average score of 100.

This means that approximately 68% of people who take this IQ test will score somewhere between 85 and 115. As you look further toward the extreme ends of the distribution, scores tend to become less common.

In many cases, an IQ test score that falls below 70 is considered low IQ, while a score of above 140 indicates high IQ. In the past, scores below 70 were used as a marker to identify intellectual disabilities. Today, test scores alone are not enough to diagnose an intellectual disability as diagnosticians also consider factors such as the age of onset and adaptive skills .

How common are very high IQ test scores?

Very few individuals (approximately 0.2%) receive a score of more than 145 (indicating a very high IQ ) or less than 55 (indicating a very low IQ) on an IQ test.

How to Interpret Your Score

To understand what your IQ test score really means, it can be helpful to know how these tests are designed and how your score compares to others. Your score on an IQ test can tell you how you compare to others in your peer group regarding:

• Language skills
• Mathematical abilities
• Processing speed
• Reasoning abilities
• Visual-spatial processing

To adequately assess and interpret IQ test scores, scientists who develop these tests use a process known as standardization . This involves administering the test to a representative sample of the population that will eventually take the test.

This initial sample represents the total population as accurately as possible and reflects many of the things that are present in the general population. This allows IQ test developers to establish norms or standards by which individual scores can be compared.

Potential Pitfalls of IQ Tests

IQ testing has been controversial throughout history for a few reasons, including:

• Discrimination : IQ tests have been used to justify eugenicist movements and discrimination against minority groups and disabled individuals.
• Validity : Not all experts agree on a standard definition of intelligence , so not all IQ tests measure the same things.
• Reliability : There is also the question of how reliable these tests are. Reliable IQ tests should provide consistent results. Put another way, people should score roughly the same each time they take the test.

While higher IQ test scores are linked to increased health, academic performance, and overall well-being, these scores do not necessarily predict an individual's success in life . It is important to remember that IQ tests are only one measure of intelligence.

What factors can affect my score?

Many factors can influence IQ and scores can change over time. Some of the factors that can impact a person's IQ test score include:

• Educational access and background
• Environment
• Overall health and medical conditions

Many experts believe that other important elements contribute to intelligence, including social and emotional factors. Some experts even suggest that these social and emotional skills actually matter more than IQ when it comes to determining success in life.  

History of IQ Tests

French psychologist Alfred Binet was the first to develop a formal test of intelligence and a form of his original IQ test is still in use today as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. Later, psychologist Charles Spearman developed a concept of general intelligence , or general mental ability to perform a wide variety of cognitive tasks.

Psychologist Robert Yerkes developed IQ tests for the U.S. Army during World War I to test army recruits. During the 1950s, David Wechsler developed IQ tests for use with children and adults. These tests remain popular today.

Where to get tested

If you want to take a formal IQ test, a licensed psychologist can provide this service for you. This mental health professional is trained to administer and supervise IQ tests, also ensuring that the test used is valid and reliable.

Several online sites also offer free IQ tests if you're more interested in knowing how you score but don't need a formal test. When selecting a free IQ test provider, it can be helpful to choose an organization that is reputable in the field of intelligence. For example, Mensa International offers a free online IQ test .

Keep in Mind

While IQ test scores can reveal information about an individual's abilities in certain domains, it is important to remember that other factors—including such things as adaptive skills, emotional intelligence , and task performance—are also important indicators of an individual's capabilities.

Kaufman A.  IQ Testing 101 .

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Stangor C. 10.1 Defining and Measuring Intelligence . Introduction to Psychology. Version 2.1.

De Boeck P, Fore LR, González T, San Martín E. An alternative view on the measurement of intelligence and its history . The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence . 2020:47-74. doi:10.1017/9781108770422.005

Deary IJ, Strand S, Smith P, Fernandez C. Intelligence and educational achievement .  Intelligence . 2007;35:13–21. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2006.02.001

Brinch CN, Galloway TA. Schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores .  PNAS . 2012;109(2):425‐430. doi:10.1073/pnas.1106077109

Bartholomew D.  Measuring Intelligence .

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Why a high IQ doesn't mean you're smart

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427321.000-clever-fools-why-a-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart.html

IS GEORGE W. BUSH stupid? It's a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and "as a result ill-informed". The political pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough accused him of lacking intellectual depth, claiming that compared with other US presidents whose intellect had been questioned, Bush junior was "in a league by himself". Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical".

How can someone with a high IQ have these kinds of intellectual deficiencies? Put another way, how can a "smart" person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years. He says it applies to more people than you might think. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity - how much information you can hold in mind.

But the tests fall down when it comes to measuring those abilities crucial to making good judgements in real-life situations. That's because they are unable to assess things such as a person's ability to critically weigh up information, or whether an individual can override the intuitive cognitive biases that can lead us astray.

This is the kind of rational thinking we are compelled to do every day, whether deciding which foods to eat, where to invest money, or how to deal with a difficult client at work. We need to be good at rational thinking to navigate our way around an increasingly complex world. And yet, says Stanovich, IQ tests - still the predominant measure of people's cognitive abilities - do not effectively tap into it. "IQ tests measure an important domain of cognitive functioning and they are moderately good at predicting academic and work success. But they are incomplete. They fall short of the full panoply of skills that would come under the rubric of 'good thinking'." IQ isn't everything

"A high IQ is like height in a basketball player," says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. There's a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there's a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ."

IQ tests and their proxies, which are designed to measure a factor known as general intelligence, are used by many businesses and colleges to help select the "best" candidates, and also play a role in schools and universities, in the form of SAT tests in the US and CATs in the UK. "IQ tests determine, to an important degree, the academic and professional careers of millions of people in the US," Stanovich says in his book, What Intelligence Tests Miss (Yale University Press, 2008). He challenges the "lavish attention" society bestows on such tests, which he claims measure only a limited part of cognitive functioning. "IQ tests are overvalued, and I think most psychologists would agree with that," says Jonathan Evans, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Plymouth, UK.

Indeed, IQ scores have long been criticised as poor indicators of an individual's all-round intelligence, as well as for their inability to predict how good a person will be in a particular profession. The palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould claimed in The Mismeasure of Man in 1981 that general intelligence was simply a mathematical artefact and that its use was unscientific and culturally and socially discriminatory. Howard Gardner at the Harvard Graduate School of Education has been arguing - controversially - for more than 25 years that cognitive capacity is best understood in terms of multiple intelligences, covering mathematical, verbal, visual-spatial, physiological, naturalistic, self-reflective, social and musical aptitudes.

Yet unlike many critics of IQ testing, Stanovich and other researchers into rational thinking are not trying to redefine intelligence, which they are happy to characterise as those mental abilities that can be measured by IQ tests. Rather, they are trying to focus attention on cognitive faculties that go beyond intelligence - what they describe as the essential tools of rational thinking. These, they claim, are just as important as intelligence to judgement and decision-making. "IQ is only part of what it means to be smart," says Evans.

As an illustration of how rational-thinking ability differs from intelligence, consider this puzzle: if it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? Most people instinctively jump to the wrong answer that "feels" right - 100 - even if they later amend it. When Shane Frederick at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut, put this and two similarly counter-intuitive questions to about 3400 students at various colleges and universities in the US - Harvard and Princeton among them - only 17 per cent got all three right (see "Test your thinking"). A third of the students failed to give any correct answers (Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol 19, p 25).

We encounter problems like these in various guises every day. Without careful reasoning we often get them wrong, probably because our brains use two different systems to process information (see New Scientist, 30 August 2008, p 34). One is intuitive and spontaneous; the other is deliberative and reasoned. Intuitive processing can serve us well in some areas - choosing a potential partner, for example, or in situations where you've had a lot of experience. It can trip us up in others, though, such as when we overvalue our own egocentric perspective. Deliberative processing, on the other hand, is key to conscious problem-solving and can help us override our intuitive tendencies if they look like leading us astray.

The problem with IQ tests is that while they are effective at assessing our deliberative skills, which involve reason and the use of working memory, they are unable to assess our inclination to use them when the situation demands. This is a crucial distinction: as Daniel Kahneman at Princeton University puts it, intelligence is about brain power whereas rational thinking is about control. "Some people who are intellectually able do not bother to engage very much in analytical thinking and are inclined to rely on their intuitions," explains Evans. "Other people will check out their gut feeling and reason it through and make sure they have a justification for what they're doing." An IQ test cannot predict which of these paths someone will follow, hence the George W. Bush incongruity of people who are supposedly smart acting foolishly.

The idea that Bush is just one foolish smart person among many, and that intelligence is a poor predictor of "good thinking", comes from a series of recent experiments that compared the performances of people of a range of intellectual abilities on rational-thinking tasks. In a study published last year, Stanovich and Richard West of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, found there was no correlation between intelligence and a person's ability to avoid some common traps of intuitive-thinking (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 94, p 672).

On certain types of thinking tasks, such as those involving number ratios, probabilities, deductive reasoning and the use of hindsight, intelligent people do perform better, Stanovich and others have found. This is particularly true when any intuitive pitfalls are obvious, especially if a correct answer depends on logic or abstract reasoning - abilities that IQ tests measure well. But most researchers agree that, overall, the correlation between intelligence and successful decision-making is weak. The exception is when people are warned that they might be vulnerable to a thinking bias, in which case those with high IQs tend to do better. This, says Evans, is because while smart people don't always reason more than others, "when they do reason, they reason better".

For example, consider the following problem. Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George; Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? If asked to choose between yes, no, or cannot be determined, the vast majority of people go for the third option - incorrectly. If told to reason through all the options, though, those of high IQ are more likely to arrive at the right answer (which is "yes": we don't know Anne's marital status, but either way a married person would be looking at an unmarried one). What this means, says Stanovich, is that "intelligent people perform better only when you tell them what to do".

Perkins explains this as follows: "IQ indicates a greater capacity for complex cognition for problems new to you. But what we apply that capability to is another question. Think of our minds as searchlights. IQ measures the brightness of the searchlight, but where we point it also matters. Some people don't point their searchlights at the other side of the case much, for many reasons - entrenched ideas, avoidance of what might be disturbing, simple haste. A higher wattage searchlight in itself is no protection against such follies." Indeed, it seems even the super-intelligent are not immune. A survey of members of Mensa (the High IQ Society) in Canada in the mid-1980s found that 44 per cent of them believed in astrology, 51 per cent believed in biorhythms and 56 per cent believed in aliens (Skeptical Inquirer, vol 13, p 216). Think of our minds as searchlights. IQ measures the brightness of the searchlight, but where we point it also matters.

The idea that IQ is a poor measure of rationality is not without its critics, though. Christopher Ferguson, who studies the genetic and environmental factors behind human behaviour at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, says that since those with high IQ tend to live longer and earn more, we should assume that intelligent people are more rational. "They tend to have more knowledge with which to make better decisions," he says.

Yet Wändi Bruine de Bruin at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has shown that intelligence cannot be the only factor that dictates whether someone is a good thinker and decision-maker. In a study of 360 Pittsburgh residents aged between 18 and 88, her team found that, regardless of differences in intelligence, those who displayed better rational-thinking skills suffered significantly fewer negative events in their lives, such as being in serious credit card debt, having an unplanned pregnancy or being suspended from school (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 92, p 938). Andrew Parker, now with the Rand Corporation in Pittsburgh, and Baruch Fischhoff at Carnegie Mellon found a similar association among adolescents. Those who scored higher on a test of decision-making competence drank less, took fewer drugs and engaged in less risky behaviour overall (Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, vol 18, p 1). This suggests that rational thinking may be more important than intelligence for positive life experiences, Fischhoff says.

A potent criticism of Stanovich's theory is the lack of a proven test of rational thinking skills that could be used alongside IQ tests. "It is not enough to say what intelligence is not measuring, you have to propose alternative ways of measuring rationality," says Kahneman. Stanovich maintains that while developing a universal "rationality-quotient (RQ) test" would require a multimillion-dollar research programme, there is no technical or conceptual reason why it could not be done. There are already several contenders, such as the measure of decision-making competence used by Bruine de Bruin and Fischhoff.

Would a valid RQ test be useful? "Hypothetically, yes, because it would cover skills that are more directly related to what people will be doing in their jobs," says Bruine de Bruin. Kahneman maintains that IQ tests, as measures of brain power, work well for academic selection. "But I would very seriously consider RQ tests as a way of selecting managers or leaders, particularly if I wanted a style of leadership that is thorough and not overly impulsive," he says.

There is a drawback, however: unlike with IQ, it would be relatively easy to train people to do well on RQ tests. "They measure the extent to which people are inclined to use what capacity they have," says Evans. "You could train people to ignore intuition and engage reasoning for the sake of the test, even if this was not their normal inclination."

The flip side of this is that everyone can improve their rational thinking and decision-making skills. Richard Nisbett at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and others discovered that just half an hour's training in statistical reasoning can improve a person's ability to use rational thinking in everyday situations. And we don't need formal training to improve: there are many tricks we can teach ourselves, says Perkins (see "How to avoid making foolish decisions").

We might also be better equipped to elect leaders that did the same. Bush's successor is intellectually engaged, shows cognitive flexibility, can question beliefs, is sensitive to inconsistency and engages in counterfactual thinking, says Stanovich. "They could not be more different in their rational thinking profiles." President Obama's IQ, incidentally, is well above average - but then so was Bush's.

American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'

Are we really getting less intelligent? Here's the truth.

• A Northwestern University study shows a decline in three key intelligence testing categories—a tangible example of what is called the Reverse Flynn Effect.
• Leading up to the 1990s, IQ scores were consistently going up, but in recent years, that trend seems to have flipped. The reasons for both the increase and the decline are sill very much up for debate.
• Scores in verbal reasoning, matrix reasoning, and letter and number series all declined but, interestingly, scores in spatial reasoning went up.

Americans’ IQ scores are trending in a downward direction. In fact, they’ve been falling for over a decade.

According to a press release, in studying intelligence testing data from 2006 to 2018, Northwestern University researchers noticed that test scores in three out of four “cognitive domains” were going down. This is the first time we’ve seen a consistent negative slope for these testing categories, providing tangible evidence of what is known as the “Reverse Flynn Effect.”

In a 1984 study, James Flynn noticed that intelligence test scores had steadily increased since the early 1930s. We call that steady rise the Flynn Effect. Considering that overall intelligence seemed to be increasing faster than could be explained by evolution, the reason increase became a source of debate, with many attributing the change to various environmental factors.

But now, it seems that a Reverse Flynn Effect is, well, in effect.

On the flip side, however, scores in spatial reasoning (known as 3D rotation) followed the opposite pattern, trending upward over the 12-year period. “There’s a debate about what’s causing it, but not every domain is going down; one of them is going up,” Elizabeth Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, says in a news release . “If all the scores were going in the same direction, you could make a nice little narrative about it, but that’s not the case. We need to do more to dig into it.”

Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent. “It doesn’t mean their mental ability is lower or higher; it’s just a difference in scores that are favoring older or newer samples,” she said in a press release. “It could just be that they’re getting worse at taking tests or specifically worse at taking these kinds of tests.”

And, it should be said, there has long been debate over how accurately IQ tests are able to gauge overall intelligence and potential for success in society in the first place.

Regardless, scores are falling, and there’s got to be a reason for the decline. Dworak says it might have something to do with “a shift in perceived values in society.” She offers up the potential explanation that an increase in focus on STEM education may have allowed other areas, like abstract reasoning, to fall by the wayside.

“If you’re thinking about what society cares about and what it’s emphasizing and reinforcing every day,” she says, “there’s a possibility of that being reflected in performance on an ability test.”

A few other hypotheses have been put forth to try and explain the reverse Flynn Effect, such as falling nutritional standards, the worsening of school systems, social media, increased air pollution, or the idea that people just be less interested in portions of the SPAP Project personality survey.

Falling IQs have become yet another mystery for scientists to solve.

Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland. 

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5 Experts Answer: Can Your IQ Change?

Each week, MyHealthNewsDaily asks the experts to answer questions about your health. This week, we asked psychologists: Can your IQ ever change?

Jack Naglieri, research professor at University of Virginia:

The answer to this question, like many others, depends on a number of factors. If you look at the research where they've made people smarter (i.e. improved their IQs), what they're really doing is to make people function better.

I've been able to teach children to be better in mathematics without teaching them mathematics. You can teach a child to better utilize their ability to plan, and that improves their academic performance not only in math, but in reading comprehension. So, what I would say, is we didn't make the children smarter, but we taught them how to use what they have more efficiently, and better.

Understanding changes in IQ also requires carefully considering how intelligence is being measured . People confuse ability with knowledge. We all can study and improve our vocabulary. But I would argue that doesn't make us any smarter.

The best way to measure intelligence is to measure those abilities that underlie the acquisition of knowledge, separately from the knowledge we have.

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Richard Nisbett, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan:

Yes, your IQ can change over time. But [IQ] tests give you the same answer to a very substantial extent, even over a period of year. The older you are, the more stable your test score will be.

The most volatility in IQ scores is in childhood, mostly in adolescence. Offhand I can't think of a reason why it would be, it just seems to be the case.

Also, the average IQ of people is changing over time. Basically, people are gaining in modern industrialized societies. IQs are increasing three points per decade. In fact, there was an 18-point increase between 1947 and 2002. So the average IQ of a 20-year-old in 1947 was lower than the average IQ of a 20-year-old in 2002.

Now, validity of IQ as a measurement of all that we consider "intelligence" is another question.

Stephen Ceci, professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University:

Absolutely. And there's plenty of evidence documenting this.

An article in November in the journal Nature by Price and her colleagues is one example. It had 33 adolescents, who were 12- to 16-years-old when the study started. Price and her team gave them IQ tests, tracked them for four years, and then gave them IQ tests again.

The fluctuations in IQ were enormous. I'm not talking about a couple points, but 20-plus IQ points, one way or another. These changes in IQ scores were not random — they tracked very nicely with structural and functional brain imaging. Suppose the adolescent's verbal IQ really went up during that time; it was verbal areas of the brain that changed.

There are quite a large number of other studies showing IQ can change . Many of the changes in IQ are correlated to changes in schooling. One way that school increases IQ is to teach children to "taxonimize," or group things systematically instead of thematically. This kind of thinking is rewarded on many IQ tests.

There's also a number of studies showing that the brain changes after several kinds of regimen. London Taxi drivers whose brains are scanned before and after they start driving, and learning to navigate London's maze of streets, show changes in the brain as they use more navigational skills. Even young adults who take a juggling course show brain changes.

If you put it all together, and the evidence is quite compelling, that life experiences and school-related experiences change both the brain and IQ. This is true of adults and children.

Alan S. Kaufman, clinical professor of psychology at the Yale University School of Medicine:

There's no such thing as "an" IQ. You have an IQ at a given point in time. That IQ has built-in error. It's not like stepping on a scale to determine how much you weigh.

The reasonable error around any reliable IQ is going to be plus or minus 5 or 6 points, to give you a 95 percent confidence interval. So, for example, if a person scores 126, then you can say with 95 percent confidence that the person's true IQ is somewhere between 120 and 132; within our science we don't get any more accurate than that.

But as soon as you go to a different IQ test, then the range is even wider, because different IQ tests measure slightly different things.

But while there is no single IQ – it's a range of IQs – you can still pretty much determine whether a person is going to score roughly at a low level, or an average level, or a high level .

However, IQ is a relative concept. IQ is how well you do on an IQ test compared to other people your age, and that is true whether you are 4 or in your 40s.

Kevin McGrew, director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics, visiting professor in Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota

It depends. First I think it is important to distinguish between at least three different meanings of the word intelligence. There is biological intelligence, or what is typically defined as neural efficiency. Then there's psychometric intelligence – your measured IQ score – which is an indirect and imperfect method of estimating biological intelligence.

Can you increase biological intelligence? Research during the past decade using various neurotechnologies (aka, brain fitness programs) has suggested that it is possible to fine-tune your neural efficiency, or mental horsepower. Your cognitive functions can be made to work more efficiently. and in a more synchronized manner.

So can you change your IQ score? Individuals can change IQ scores. Your score may change not because of any real change in general intelligence, but that different tests may be used which measure different mixtures of abilities .

Also, some abilities (e.g., fluid reasoning and crystallized intelligence, or verbal abilities) are more stable over time, while others are less stable (e.g., short-term memory and cognitive processing speed).

You may have a certain level of general intelligence but it is important how you use it.  When you approach a task, how well do you plan? How well do you adjust your response if it's not going well? These non-cognitive traits can be improved more easily than cognitive abilities. 

Read more 5 Experts Answer columns:

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Watch CBS News

IQ scores not accurate marker of intelligence, study shows

By Michelle Castillo

December 21, 2012 / 4:33 PM EST / CBS News

Could IQ scores be a false indicator of intelligence?

Researchers have determined in the largest online study on the intelligence quotient (IQ) that results from the test may not exactly show how smart someone is.

"When we looked at the data, the bottom line is the whole concept of IQ -- or of you having a higher IQ than me -- is a myth," Dr. Adrian Owen, the study's senior investigator and the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging at the university's Brain and Mind Institute said to the Toronto Star . "There is no such thing as a single measure of IQ or a measure of general intelligence."

More than 100,000 participants joined the study and completed 12 online cognitive tests that examined memory, reasoning, attention and planning abilities. They were also asked about their background and lifestyle.

They found that there was not one single test or component that could accurately judge how well a person could perform mental and cognitive tasks. Instead, they determined there are at least three different components that make up intelligence or a "cognitive profile": short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component.

Scientists also scanned participants' brains with a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and saw that different cognitive abilities were related to different circuits in the brain, suggesting that the theory that different areas of the brain control certain abilities may be true.

Researchers also discovered that training one's brain to help perform better cognitively did not help.

"People who 'brain-train' are no better at any of these three aspects of intelligence than people who don't," Owen said.

For some reason, people who played video games did better on reasoning and short-term memory portions of the test.

However, aging was associated with a decline on memory and reasoning abilities. Those who smoked did worse on short-term memory and verbal portions, while those with anxiety did badly on short-term memory test components.

"We have shown categorically that you cannot sum up the difference between people in terms of one number, and that is really what is important here," Owen told the CBC.

"Now we need to go forward and work out how we can assess the differences between people, and that will be something for future studies," he added.

The study was published in Neuron on Dec. 20.

Michelle Castillo is an associate editor for CBSNews.com.

More from CBS News

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• Published: 10 July 2014

Chimpanzee IQ starts in the genes

• Sara Reardon  

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Study shows that about half of the animals' intellect is heritable.

Smart chimpanzees often have smart offspring, researchers suggest in one of the first analyses of the genetic contribution to intelligence in apes. The findings, published online today in Current Biology 1 , could shed light on how human intelligence evolved, and might even lead to discoveries of genes associated with mental capacity.

A team led by William Hopkins, a psychologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta, tested the intelligence of 99 chimpanzees aged 9 to 54 years old, most of them descended from the same group of animals housed at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. The chimps faced cognitive challenges such as remembering where food was hidden in a rotating object, following a human’s gaze and using tools to solve problems.

A subsequent statistical analysis revealed a correlation between the animals' performance on these tests and their relatedness to other chimpanzees participating in the study. About half of the difference in performance between individual apes was genetic, the researchers found.

In humans, about 30% of intelligence in children can be explained by genetics; for adults, who are less vulnerable to environmental influences, that figure rises to 70%. Those numbers are comparable to the new estimate of the heritability of intelligence across a wide age range of chimps, says Danielle Posthuma, a behavioural geneticist at VU University in Amsterdam, who was not involved in the research.

“This study is much overdue,” says Rasmus Nielsen, a computational biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “There has been enormous focus on understanding heritability of intelligence in humans, but very little on our closest relatives.”

But Nielsen expects future research on chimpanzee intelligence to run into some of the same difficulties as studies of human IQ, such as determining the influence of the environment in which a chimp is raised, or the factors it was exposed to as a foetus. It would be interesting, he says, to compare the estimates of heritability of intelligence in wild chimpanzees to those of chimps raised in captivity.

Hopkins' team now plans to repeat its experiment in a group of chimpanzees from another facility, who would be genetically different from the Yerkes centre group. He also hopes to identify specific genes associated with intelligence. The researchers have a head start: in a January paper published in Scientific Reports 2 , Hopkins and his colleagues found that chimps that were better at following social cues had specific variants of a gene called AVPR1A , which is associated with social behaviour in humans.

Robert Plomin, a behavioural geneticist at King’s College London who studies intelligence in human twins, expects this to be a difficult task. “For 15 years, we’ve been trying to find genes for intelligence, without much success,” he says. Although hundreds of gene candidates have been proposed, each seems to exert only a small effect on an individual’s intelligence, Plomin adds. And chimpanzees are more genetically diverse from one another than humans are 3 , which may make pinpointing relevant genes yet more difficult.

But Hopkins hopes that the apes could still be a useful model for understanding IQ in humans: chimpanzees raised in captivity are not affected by the same socio-economic and cultural factors that can influence humans’ performance on standardized intelligence tests. This may enable researchers to spot new intelligence genes in chimps, and then search for the effects of these genes in humans.

Hopkins, W. D., Russell, J. L. & Schaeffer, J. Curr. Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.05.076 (2014).

Hopkins, W. D. et al. Sci. Rep. 4 , 3774 (2014).

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How multitasking erodes productivity and dings your iq.

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The frenzied pursuit of responding to everything leads to multitasking – and the resulting ... [+] interruptions would have fit neatly into what Ralph Waldo Emerson called “emphatic trifles.”

If you’ve heard of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), you probably know that its  symptoms  include impulsivity, difficulty focusing, poor time management, problems prioritizing, and short attention span. And it's taxing for those who struggle to overcome it.

In the workplace, something quite similar and widespread plagues companies, and it wears the innocent label of multitasking. Although it purports to increase efficiency, in most cases, multitasking merely increases busyness while eroding productivity. (A better name might be "multitaxing.") It is the business equivalent of leaving a runner on second at the end of an inning — every inning. Baseball teams aren’t productive because they engage in feverish activity; they’re productive because they focus on bringing the runner home. Leaders need to make sure their companies do the same.

What is multitasking?

Multitasking is admittedly a loaded term, so for the purpose of this column, I'll limit its meaning to the act of undertaking more than one task at the same time (or during the same work session) in the name of super-efficiency.

For example, one might be talking with a customer by phone while completing a form for a regulatory body on a computer and scanning receipts to be submitted with an expense report. Or at another level, one might attend a meeting while making notes for a PowerPoint presentation on a laptop and fielding incoming texts from coworkers on a smartphone.

All that activity provides the sensation of accomplishment when, in fact, it is unproductive. Multitasking causes employees to pay partial attention to multiple items simultaneously. That results in incomplete understanding, inaccurate or patchy responses to messages or requests (and therefore additional follow-up messages), or things slipping through the cracks.

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And “since I’m multitasking anyway,” one might rationalize, “let me just check my social media accounts,” a further distraction.

So, leaders need to pay attention to multitasking in their organizations because:

• It’s terrible for business. Rather than aid productivity, multitasking hamstrings it by as much as  40% .
• It’s trying for employees. Multitasking increases stress while reducing achievement and meaningfulness.
• It’s treacherous for brains. Multitasking impairs cognitive ability and  lowers IQ .

And yet, job listings continue to require multitasking as a necessary skill, and applicants often boast of it in cover letters. Here’s an actual job posting from a few days ago for a medical data handler, where errors can cause significant problems for patients as well as lots of financial confusion:  “The ideal candidate is … able to multi-task, with a high degree of quality and accuracy while complying with all regulatory and company standards.”

Kidding, right?

The taste for multitasking in the workplace was fueled initially by the torrent of data that began to flow into our daily work lives. It started as a desperate attempt to keep up with hundreds of emails, texts, intra-company chat lines, and whatever report our boss needs in 20 minutes. We have continued to fight back by responding instantly to every demand until a map of our workday organization now resembles a plate of spaghetti. Something or someone is continually interrupting our train of thought and derailing whatever had been our avowed purpose for the day.

All these interruptions would have fit neatly into what Ralph Waldo Emerson called “emphatic trifles.”

True, some tools have been developed to help with this, but multitasking is still, if not an actual disease, certainly tantamount to an ADHD-like ailment in its effect on the business landscape.

The Myth of Multitasking

It’s magical thinking to believe that one person who multitasks can do the work of two or three who don’t, or that because of a multitasker’s instant responsiveness, they are in control of their situation. Neither is the case.

That’s because, although most of us don’t realize it, we each have a  limited supply of attention  each day. It is currency — and I contend precious currency — as proven by everyone’s desire to have yours. Like any other currency, it needs to be carefully guarded, budgeted, and invested.

But let’s say you buy into the multitasking myth. If so, your plan for the workday might be to toil away all morning to clear your desk of all the distracting “small stuff” so that you can finally devote your attention to the Big Project later this afternoon.

Don’t bet the rent money on that outcome. Why? Because every time you switch tasks, you lose a little bit of your power to focus that day. So, if you clear out your inbox, answer a dozen texts, return six calls, make upcoming travel reservations, tend to your Slack channels, and complete a peer review before settling in to figure out a strategy for new market expansion, you’ll have spent your wad of attention without using it to pay for what matters most. And you probably won’t understand why your brain can’t focus on the remaining important task productively. You might even conclude, erroneously, that quiet time doesn’t work for you.

If you’ve ever had an amazing insight about a project in the shower, only to forget it mid-way through a hectic day, this is why. I call it attention fatigue, and it’s a direct result of multitasking.

Why multitasking won’t disappear entirely

Despite all this, the world is moving very fast, and business continues to accelerate with it. With all of our devices and channels, distractions will surround us as a regular part of life. We’re even attracted to these overwhelming distractions because they stimulate an ancient bit of wiring in our brains, which is how the modern assault of messages and interruptions have become the clickbait of our professional lives.

Eons ago, in our past lives as cave-dwellers and hunter-gatherers, the stimulus of distraction helped us stay alive. A rustle or a scent could mean a meal was nearby, or danger was at hand. When we responded to these stimuli by catching food or avoiding trouble, our brains rewarded us with what, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll call a little drop of dopamine happiness. Today, whenever we act on any of the limitless items in a constant stream of distractions, it triggers the same response. Handle a swarm of texts, drip. Respond to a flock of emails in your inbox, drip, drip. Check off an ambush of minor miscellany that landed on your to-do list, drip, drip, drip. That’s part of why multitasking is a hard habit to shake.

Yet, leaders need to know that, like all limiting habits and addictions, it’s worth overcoming. The first step, of course, is recognizing the problem. For example, after discussing this topic for a while, one of my associates arrived at this personal definition of multitasking: “The cover of busyness I use to hide from the harder, scarier stuff that real achievement requires.”

Why you aren’t built to multi-task

In primitive times, the brain’s stimulus-response incentive was a survival tool, so occasional activation made sense. But today, when multitasking triggers multiple responses every hour, there is an imbalance. The brain pays a toll every time it switches attention from one thing to another; doing so uses up brain cells and slows the response to each operation we try to perform.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, says that it’s not only the amount of time it takes for someone to switch from one part of the brain to another when they multitask;  the bandwidth  matters, too. You are starting a new task while maintaining a level of alertness to the other two or three things on your plate. While your brain is deciding when to shift between them, it must also find where it left off before the last switch, and then reassemble the surrounding contextual elements for the task to which you have just returned. The  American Psychological Association  reports that this slows productivity, and the more complicated or unfamiliar the work is, the longer it takes the brain to make these adjustments.

Seth Godin  (not a medical doctor, but someone who understands productivity) recommends resisting this drain on mental bandwidth by simply not being available when people ask, “Have you got three minutes?” In his view, multitasking is what prevents getting to, or finishing, the most important things. He ascribes this diminished productivity to what former Microsoft executive Linda Stone termed as " continuous partial attention ."

The frenzied pursuit of responding to everything immediately leads to multitasking, which sounds like a productive idea but instead taxes your brain and leaves you too mentally and emotionally fatigued to take on serious matters that require concentrated attention. Our brains are not wired for sustained multitasking, and our businesses are paying far too high a price in lost productivity.

So, our role as leaders and managers must include minimizing this scattershot approach to task completion and instead applying our innate human strengths in a more focused way. It’s the only direction our companies and our people can take to be more successful and productive in an age of distraction.

I’ll say more about the cost and cure of multitasking in my next column.

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Countries by IQ - Average IQ by Country 2024

IQ scores, indicative of educational quality and resources in regions, are based on standard tests adjusted by national academic assessments and data quality considerations.

While IQ is a common measure of intelligence, other metrics include academic test scores, the Intelligence Capital Index, and the number of Nobel Prizes won.

Only Singapore and Finland appear consistently across all three ranking lists presented in the article, validating these countries’ rankings but also indicating the diversity of factors considered in measuring average IQ globally.

Intelligence quotient (IQ) is a measure of human intelligence. People who want to have their IQ measured take standardized tests and receive a score that ranks their intelligence level. The higher one's IQ score, the more intelligent that person is considered to be.

IQ and Education: Two Sides of the Same Coin

IQ scores typically reflect the quality of education and resources available to people in their local geographic regions. Areas of the world with lower IQ scores are typically poorer and less developed, particularly in the area of education, compared to countries with higher IQ scores. Many researchers also use IQ to determine the smartest countries in the world. The IQ map above shades each country depending on how high the average IQ score in it is.

Which Country Has the Highest Average IQ?

According to a 2019 study by researchers Richard Lynn and David Becker at the Ulster Institute, the highest average IQ scores in the world belong to the Japanese, with the citizens of Taiwan and Singapore close behind. The top 10 list appears below, and the full rankings appear in the table further down this page.

Top 10 Countries with the Highest Average IQ - Ulster Institute 2019:*

*It bears mentioning that Lynn's studies, while comprehensive, tend to spark considerable debate.

As the data demonstrates, average IQ scores vary widely across the globe. Some researchers divide the world's countries into ranked categories based on their average IQ scores. These averages were obtained by starting with the country's average score in standard IQ tests (a common starting point), then fine-tuning those scores with additional measurements, such as national math, reading, and science assessments, while also factoring in the overall quality of the data.

Other Methods of Measuring Intelligence

However, it's important to remember that IQ isn't the only way to measure intelligence. There are many different ways to seek out the smartest countries in the world , and many of them have nothing to do with average IQ. For instance, it is possible to evaluate a country’s academic test scores , likelihood of "expanding the frontier of knowledge" and introducing new data technologies , or even the number of Nobel Prizes won .

Top 10 Smartest Countries Based on Students' Test Scores in Reading , Math and Science - OECD PISA 2022:

Top 10 Countries with the Highest Intelligence Capital Index - 2017:

The average IQ in a country is calculated by starting with the country's average score in standard IQ tests, fine-tuning with national math, reading, and science assessments, and considering the overall data quality. The sources of data considered in this article vary by the number of variables considered, depth of analysis, and recency of data.

• Substantial research on the subject of national IQs was conducted by psychologist Richard Lynn (1930-2023), working alongside the late Tatu Vanhanen (1929-2015) or, for 2019's The Intelligence of Nations, with David Becker.
• Becker's estimates are categorized by source. T = value is based upon actual test results from said country. E = value is a best-guess estimate based upon measured values of nearby countries.
• Becker's contributions were highly controversial. He promoted the theory that specific races and genders are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than others, and both his methology and his objectivity were often called into question. However, his work brought attention to the field and he is frequently (if often grudgingly) considered a pioneer in the field of national intelligence.
• The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial survey of 15-year-old students around the world that measures students' ability to recall learned knowledge and apply it in new settings both in and out of school. PISA results were most recently released in 2022.
• The Intelligence Capital Index (ICI) was created by economist Kai L. Chan and most recently updated in 2017.

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Which country has the highest average IQ?

Japan has the highest average IQ in the world, with an average IQ of 106.48 .

What are the top 10 countries by IQ?

Frequently asked questions.

• Intelligence Capital Index - Kailchan
• Pisa 2022 - OCED
• Intelligence related to income and climate - 2006
• The Intelligence of Nations - Ulster Institute 2019
• World Ranking of Countries By Their Average IQ - 2010
• Intelligence: A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences - 2012

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Enphase Energy (ENPH) Introduces IQ Battery 5P in France

Enphase Energy, Inc. ( ENPH Quick Quote ENPH - Free Report ) recently unveiled IQ Battery 5P, its most potent home battery solution, to the French solar market. This battery comes with a storage capacity of 5 kilowatt-hours (kWh), and in conjunction with ENPH's new IQ8 microinverters, IQ Battery 5P can provide dependable energy to residential clients whenever they desire it.

Benefits of the Launch

With the entire Europe quickly moving toward electrification, it is imperative to mention that France has the fifth-largest solar deposit in the European region. This offers a solid growth opportunity for efficient storage solutions like those provided by Enphase Energy to ensure a stable and reliable energy supply. With enhanced power, robust wired connectivity and a better commissioning experience, ENPH’s new Enphase Energy System with the IQ Battery 5P will now offer a significantly enhanced experience for both solar homeowners and installers across France. With the IQ Battery 5P, homeowners can take charge of their energy future with a durable and scalable energy storage solution. Furthermore, French homeowners may now check performance and control their battery systems intelligently using the Enphase App. Therefore, with its latest introduction, Enphase will undoubtedly reach out to more homeowners and installers in France as they are increasingly adopting solar energy and aim to become more grid-independent. This should result in more customers selecting ENPH’s battery solutions as well as the home energy system, thereby boosting its future revenues. 

Growth Prospects

As the market for renewable energy is expanding rapidly, the demand for storage solutions has skyrocketed as battery storage facilitates the integration of renewable energy. As a result, the energy storage market is growing quickly worldwide. The Mordor Intelligence firm expects global battery storage to witness a CAGR of 8.7% over the 2024-2029 period. As ENPH works to offer the most cutting-edge technology in the battery storage market that guarantees sustainability and long-term dependability, the aforementioned market growth should be beneficial for the company. Apart from France, Enphase presently distributes the IQ Battery 5P in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Italy. ENPH hopes to launch its fourth-generation battery in late 2024 with the goal of dramatically reducing energy intensity. Such activities are likely to allow ENPH to generate additional revenues from the Battery Storage Market in the future days.

Peers to Benefit

Other prominent solar players like Emeren Group ( SOL Quick Quote SOL - Free Report ) , SolarEdge Technologies ( SEDG Quick Quote SEDG - Free Report ) and Canadian Solar ( CSIQ Quick Quote CSIQ - Free Report ) are also expanding their footprint to reap the benefits of the expanding Battery Storage Market. Emeren develops battery storage projects. As of Mar 31, 2024, its battery storage portfolio comprised 19 MWh, while its total energy storage project pipeline had increased to more than 8 GW. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SOL’s 2024 sales implies an improvement of 33.7% from the prior-year figure. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s 2024 earnings per share is pegged at 29 cents, which indicates a massive rise from its 2023 reported EPS of 2 cents. SolarEdge offers several energy storage options, including battery cells, modules, racks and containerized systems. Its end-to-end Battery Energy Storage System solutions are constructed with purpose-made hardware and software, allowing for easy and rapid installation and integration on-site. Its Energy Storage revenues increased 16.2% year over year in the first quarter of 2024. SEDG has a long-term (three to five years) earnings growth rate of 12.3%. Its shares have risen 18.9% in the past 10 years. Canadian Solar boasts a strong presence in the energy storage industry, with 600 MWh of battery energy storage projects in operation. As of Mar 31, 2024, Canadian Solar’s total battery storage project development pipeline was 55.9 gigawatt-hours (GWh), including 4.3 GWh under construction and in the backlog and 51.6 GWh of projects in advanced and early-stage pipelines. CSIQ has a long-term earnings growth rate of 25%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for its 2024 sales implies an improvement of 2.5% from the prior-year figure.

Price Movement

In the past year, shares of Enphase Energy have declined 44.6% compared with the industry ’s fall of 44.4%.

Enphase Energy currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here .  

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Descriptive Statistics

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Descriptive statistics in research: a critical component of data analysis.

15 min read With any data, the object is to describe the population at large, but what does that mean and what processes, methods and measures are used to uncover insights from that data? In this short guide, we explore descriptive statistics and how it’s applied to research.

What do we mean by descriptive statistics?

With any kind of data, the main objective is to describe a population at large — and using descriptive statistics, researchers can quantify and describe the basic characteristics of a given data set.

For example, researchers can condense large data sets, which may contain thousands of individual data points or observations, into a series of statistics that provide useful information on the population of interest. We call this process “describing data”.

In the process of producing summaries of the sample, we use measures like mean, median, variance, graphs, charts, frequencies, histograms, box and whisker plots, and percentages. For datasets with just one variable, we use univariate descriptive statistics. For datasets with multiple variables, we use bivariate correlation and multivariate descriptive statistics.

Want to find out the definitions? Univariate descriptive statistics: this is when you want to describe data with only one characteristic or attribute

Bivariate correlation: this is when you simultaneously analyze (compare) two variables to see if there is a relationship between them

Multivariate descriptive statistics: this is a subdivision of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one outcome variable

Then, after describing and summarising the data, as well as using simple graphical analyses, we can start to draw meaningful insights from it to help guide specific strategies. It’s also important to note that descriptive statistics can employ and use both quantitative and qualitative research .

Describing data is undoubtedly the most critical first step in research as it enables the subsequent organisation, simplification and summarisation of information — and every survey question and population has summary statistics. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Examples of descriptive statistics

Consider for a moment a number used to summarise how well a striker is performing in football — goals scored per game. This number is simply the number of shots taken against how many of those shots hit the back of the net (reported to three significant digits). If a striker is scoring 0.333, that’s one goal for every three shots. If they’re scoring one in four, that’s 0.250.

A classic example is a student’s grade point average (GPA). This single number describes the general performance of a student across a range of course experiences and classes. It doesn’t tell us anything about the difficulty of the courses the student is taking, or what those courses are, but it does provide a summary that enables a degree of comparison with people or other units of data.

Ultimately, descriptive statistics make it incredibly easy for people to understand complex (or data intensive) quantitative or qualitative insights across large data sets.

Take your research and subsequent analysis to the next level

Types of descriptive statistics

To quantitatively summarise the characteristics of raw, ungrouped data, we use the following types of descriptive statistics:

• Measures of Central Tendency ,
• Measures of Dispersion and
• Measures of Frequency Distribution.

Following the application of any of these approaches, the raw data then becomes ‘grouped’ data that’s logically organised and easy to understand. To visually represent the data, we then use graphs, charts, tables etc.

Let’s look at the different types of measurement and the statistical methods that belong to each:

Measures of Central Tendency are used to describe data by determining a single representative of central value. For example, the mean, median or mode.

Measures of Dispersion are used to determine how spread out a data distribution is with respect to the central value, e.g. the mean, median or mode. For example, while central tendency gives the person the average or central value, it doesn’t describe how the data is distributed within the set.

Measures of Frequency Distribution are used to describe the occurrence of data within the data set (count).

The methods of each measure are summarised in the table below:

Mean: The most popular and well-known measure of central tendency. The mean is equal to the sum of all the values in the data set divided by the number of values in the data set.

Median: The median is the middle score for a set of data that has been arranged in order of magnitude. If you have an even number of data, e.g. 10 data points, take the two middle scores and average the result.

Mode: The mode is the most frequently occurring observation in the data set.  

Range: The difference between the highest and lowest value.

Standard deviation: Standard deviation measures the dispersion of a data set relative to its mean and is calculated as the square root of the variance.

Quartile deviation : Quartile deviation measures the deviation in the middle of the data.

Variance: Variance measures the variability from the average of mean.

Absolute deviation: The absolute deviation of a dataset is the average distance between each data point and the mean.

Count: How often each value occurs.

Scope of descriptive statistics in research

Descriptive statistics (or analysis) is considered more vast than other quantitative and qualitative methods as it provides a much broader picture of an event, phenomenon or population.

But that’s not all: it can use any number of variables, and as it collects data and describes it as it is, it’s also far more representative of the world as it exists.

However, it’s also important to consider that descriptive analyses lay the foundation for further methods of study. By summarising and condensing the data into easily understandable segments, researchers can further analyse the data to uncover new variables or hypotheses.

Mostly, this practice is all about the ease of data visualisation. With data presented in a meaningful way, researchers have a simplified interpretation of the data set in question. That said, while descriptive statistics helps to summarise information, it only provides a general view of the variables in question.

It is, therefore, up to the researchers to probe further and use other methods of analysis to discover deeper insights.

Things you can do with descriptive statistics:

• Define subject characteristics: If a marketing team wanted to build out accurate buyer personas for specific products and industry verticals, they could use descriptive analyses on customer datasets (procured via a survey) to identify consistent traits and behaviours.

They could then ‘describe’ the data to build a clear picture and understanding of who their buyers are, including things like preferences, business challenges, income and so on.

• Measure data trends

Let’s say you wanted to assess propensity to buy over several months or years for a specific target market and product. With descriptive statistics, you could quickly summarise the data and extract the precise data points you need to understand the trends in product purchase behaviour.

• Compare events, populations or phenomena

How do different demographics respond to certain variables? For example, you might want to run a customer study to see how buyers in different job functions respond to new product features or price changes. Are all groups as enthusiastic about the new features and likely to buy? Or do they have reservations? This kind of data will help inform your overall product strategy and potentially how you tier solutions.

• Validate existing conditions

When you have a belief or hypothesis but need to prove it, you can use descriptive techniques to ascertain underlying patterns or assumptions.

• Form new hypotheses

With the data presented and surmised in a way that everyone can understand (and infer connections from), you can delve deeper into specific data points to uncover deeper and more meaningful insights — or run more comprehensive research.

Guiding your survey design to improve the data collected

To use your surveys as an effective tool for customer engagement and understanding, every survey goal and item should answer one simple, yet highly important question:

“What am I really asking?”

It might seem trivial, but by having this question frame survey research, it becomes significantly easier for researchers to develop the right questions that uncover useful, meaningful and actionable insights.

Planning becomes easier, questions clearer and perspective far wider and yet nuanced.

Hypothesise — what’s the problem that you’re trying to solve? Far too often, organisations collect data without understanding what they’re asking, and why they’re asking it.

Finally, focus on the end result. What kind of data do you need to answer your question? Also, are you asking a quantitative or qualitative question? Here are a few things to consider:

• Clear questions are clear for everyone. It takes time to make a concept clear
• Ask about measurable, evident and noticeable activities or behaviours.
• Make rating scales easy. Avoid long lists, confusing scales or “don’t know” or “not applicable” options.
• Ensure your survey makes sense and flows well. Reduce the cognitive load on respondents by making it easy for them to complete the survey.
• Read your questions aloud to see how they sound.
• Pretest by asking a few uninvolved individuals to answer.

Furthermore…

As well as understanding what you’re really asking, there are several other considerations for your data:

• Keep it random

How you select your sample is what makes your research replicable and meaningful. Having a truly random sample helps prevent bias, increasingly the quality of evidence you find.

• Plan for and avoid sample error

Before starting your research project, have a clear plan for avoiding sample error. Use larger sample sizes, and apply random sampling to minimise the potential for bias.

• Don’t over sample

Remember, you can sample 500 respondents selected randomly from a population and they will closely reflect the actual population 95% of the time.

• Think about the mode

Match your survey methods to the sample you select. For example, how do your current customers prefer communicating? Do they have any shared characteristics or preferences? A mixed-method approach is critical if you want to drive action across different customer segments.

Use a survey tool that supports you with the whole process

Surveys created using a survey research software can support researchers in a number of ways:

• Employee satisfaction survey template
• Employee exit survey template
• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey template
• Ad testing survey template
• Brand awareness survey template
• Product pricing survey template
• Product research survey template
• Employee engagement survey template
• Customer service survey template
• NPS survey template
• Product package testing survey template
• Product features prioritisation survey template

These considerations have been included in Qualtrics’ survey software , which summarises and creates visualisations of data, making it easy to access insights, measure trends, and examine results without complexity or jumping between systems.

Uncover your next breakthrough idea with Stats iQ™

What makes Qualtrics so different from other survey providers is that it is built in consultation with trained research professionals and includes high-tech statistical software like Qualtrics Stats iQ .

With just a click, the software can run specific analyses or automate statistical testing and data visualisation. Testing parameters are automatically chosen based on how your data is structured (e.g. categorical data will run a statistical test like Chi-squared), and the results are translated into plain language that anyone can understand and put into action.

• Get more meaningful insights from your data

Stats iQ includes a variety of statistical analyses, including: describe, relate, regression, cluster, factor, TURF, and pivot tables — all in one place!

• Confidently analyse complex data

Built-in artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms automatically choose and apply the right statistical analyses and return the insights in plain english so everyone can take action.

• Integrate existing statistical workflows

For more experienced stats users, built-in R code templates allow you to run even more sophisticated analyses by adding R code snippets directly in your survey analysis.

         Advanced statistical analysis methods available in Stats iQ

Regression analysis – Measures the degree of influence of independent variables on a dependent variable (the relationship between two or multiple variables).

Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test – Commonly used with a regression study to find out what effect independent variables have on the dependent variable. It can compare multiple groups simultaneously to see if there is a relationship between them.

Conjoint analysis – Asks people to make trade-offs when making decisions, then analyses the results to give the most popular outcome. Helps you understand why people make the complex choices they do.

T-Test – Helps you compare whether two data groups have different mean values and allows the user to interpret whether differences are meaningful or merely coincidental.

Crosstab analysis – Used in quantitative market research to analyse categorical data – that is, variables that are different and mutually exclusive, and allows you to compare the relationship between two variables in contingency tables.

Go from insights to action

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