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ANALYSING GROUP DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE USING THE PSYCHOMETRIC META-ANALYTIC METHOD OF CORRELATED VECTORS HYBRID MODEL: A REPLY TO WICHERTS (2018) ATTACKING A STRAWMAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2018

Jan te Nijenhuis Open the ORCID record for Jan te Nijenhuis [Opens in a new window]  and
Michael van den Hoek
Jan te Nijenhuis*
Affiliation:
Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Michael van den Hoek
Affiliation:
Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
*
1Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Summary

Wicherts (2018) criticizes the use of the method of correlated vectors when testing Spearman’s hypothesis. It is argued that Wicherts ignores the psychometric meta-analytic method of correlated vectors hybrid model and so is attacking a strawman.

Type
Debate
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 50 , Issue 6 , November 2018 , pp. 870 - 871
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2018

Wicherts (Reference Wicherts2018) argues that when testing Spearman’s hypothesis item-level data should be analysed using item response theory and not with the method of correlated vectors (MCV). Astonishingly, in a paper on the heritability and culture-loadedness of subtests of IQ batteries (Kan et al., Reference Kan, Wicherts, Dolan and Van der Maas2013) he used the very same technique.

Wicherts ignores the psychometric meta-analytic–MCV hybrid model (te Nijenhuis et al., Reference te Nijenhuis, van Vianen and van der Flier2007, Reference te Nijenhuis, Bakhiet, van den Hoek, Repko, Allik, Žebec and Abduljabbar2016) with its corrections for sampling error, reliability of the g vector, reliability of the second vector, restriction of range in g loadings and imperfectly measuring the construct of g. Wicherts focuses only on the individual correlations between two vectors of item scores, so Wicherts is attacking a strawman. Wicherts’ criticism at the item level is eerily similar to Schönemann’s (Reference Schönemann1997) criticism at the subtest level that MCV will automatically lead to positive correlations. Schönemann’s position has been thoroughly undermined by the large amount of negative correlations from subtest-level studies. A strong negative correlation (r=−0.39) was found in a study on learning potential at the item level (te Nijenhuis et al., Reference te Nijenhuis, van Vianen and van der Flier2007), which after corrections for artifacts might easily become r=−0.60.

Wicherts argues that relations studied with MCV are quite complex. However, from the perspective of the psychometric meta-analytic–MCV hybrid model this is to be expected, as the influences of no less than five statistical artifacts on the observed correlation have to be taken into account at the same time.

Wicherts (Reference Wicherts2018) brings up the point that, recently, reviewer Wicherts suggested to the present authors to cite an unpublished paper from himself; however, this constitutes misuse of the reviewer position. Obviously, a paper should first be accepted by the reviewers, by a selection from the forum of peers (de Groot, Reference de Groot1969).

References

de Groot, A. D. (1969) Methodology: Foundations of Inference and Research in the Social Sciences. Mouton, The Hague, the Netherlands.Google Scholar
Kan, K.-J., Wicherts, J. M., Dolan, C. V. & Van der Maas, H. L. J. (2013) On the nature and nurture of intelligence and specific cognitive abilities: the more heritable, the more culture dependent. Psychological Science 24, 2420–2428.Google Scholar
Schönemann, P. H. (1997) Famous artifacts: Spearman’s hypothesis. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive 16, 665–694.Google Scholar
te Nijenhuis, J., Bakhiet, S. F., van den Hoek, M., Repko, J., Allik, J., Žebec, M. S. & Abduljabbar, A. S. (2016) Spearman’s hypothesis tested comparing Sudanese children and adolescents with various other groups of children and adolescents on the items of the Standard Progressive Matrices. Intelligence 56, 46–57.Google Scholar
te Nijenhuis, J., van Vianen, A. & van der Flier, H. (2007) Score gains on g-loaded tests: no g . Intelligence 35, 283–300.Google Scholar
Wicherts, J. M. (2018) Ignoring psychometric problems in the study of group differences in cognitive test performance. Journal of Biosocial Science, doi:10.1017/S0021932018000172.Google Scholar