High IQ society

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from High IQ societies)
Jump to: navigation, search

A high IQ society is an organization that limits its membership to people who are within a certain high percentile of intelligence quotient (IQ) test results. The oldest, largest and best-known such society is Mensa International,[1] which was founded by Roland Berrill and Dr. Lancelot Ware in 1946. Other early societies are Intertel, founded by Ralph Haines in 1966; the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry, founded by Dr. Christopher Harding in 1974; the Triple Nine Society in 1978; Prometheus Society, Mega Society, Top One Percent Society, One-in-a-Thousand Society, Epimetheus Society, and Omega Society, founded by Dr. Ronald K. Hoeflin.

Contents

Entry requirements [edit]

High IQ societies typically accept a variety of standardized intelligence tests.

The ceiling of most standardized (validated and normed) intelligence tests is at around the 99.9th percentile. Measurements above this level need—for a credible result—a calculation, extrapolation and interpretation (including observations during the tests and sub-tests) by psychometricians experienced in high IQ testing, and at least two differently designed standardized tests (among these at least one supervised) should be performed. Measurements above 99.9th percentile are dubious as there are insufficient normative cases upon which to base a statistically justified rank-ordering.[2] In 2013, the U.S. population's normal expectation for the number of persons with an IQ of 180 or over (SD = 16) is about 14 persons.

Some societies [edit]

The entrance criteria for IQ societies varies considerably across both the kinds of tests accepted (i.e., whether the tests are either numerically, spatially, verbally, etc. slanted and are proctored or not) and how high one must score in order to acquire membership.

Some notable examples, which include widely known ones, like Mensa, that will accept the results of standardized tests taken elsewhere, are listed by percentile (assuming IQ is normally distributed with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 IQ points):

See also [edit]

References [edit]

Notes

  1. ^ Percival, Matt (2006-09-08). "The Quest for Genius". CNN. Retrieved 2008-11-29. 
  2. ^ Perleth, Christoph; Schatz, Tanja; Mönks, Franz J. (2000). "Early Identification of High Ability". In Heller, Kurt A.; Mönks, Franz J.; Sternberg, Robert J. et al. International Handbook of Giftedness and Talent (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: Pergamon. p. 301. ISBN 978-0-08-043796-5. "norm tables that provide you with such extreme values are constructed on the basis of random extrapolation and smoothing but not on the basis of empirical data of representative samples." 

Further reading

  • Kaufman, Alan S. (2009). IQ Testing 101. New York: Springer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8261-0629-2. Lay summary (10 August 2010). 
  • Shurkin, Joel (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston (MA): Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-78890-8. Lay summary (28 June 2010). 
  • Stanovich, Keith (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12385-2. Lay summary (9 August 2010). 
  • Terman, Lewis Madison; Merrill, Maude A. (1937). Measuring intelligence: A guide to the administration of the new revised Stanford-Binet tests of intelligence. Riverside textbooks in education. Boston (MA): Houghton Mifflin. 

External links [edit]