[Husker] WSJ - Sept 30th

[Scott Stewart]

As a psychologist, this article is entertaining reading and fun to start
banter at the local tavern. However, it is at best misleading.

Regarding who was tested, it is very likely that the results came from the
combine. It is generally used as a personnel selection tool and would not be
used in a college setting or as a measure of intellectual ability for
placement purposes (ie, gifted, etc). For that a much more reliable test is
required.

The Wonderlic is not a very good test and there is no way that a difference
of a few points (let alone .5) means anything. Group sampling may help
slightly, but as they say Garbage in, Garbage out. This test's reliability
is not all that impressive (Mid .80 to .95 approx) and its validity is poor
(.30 to .70). It was normed on a primarily Caucasian population, thus one's
ability to generalize across ethnicities is questionable. If you look at the
results, colleges that you would expect to have higher Caucasian populations
tend to score higher. Finally, test security of the Wonderlic is very poor.
As noted above, questions to the test are widely available.

Scott


On 10/5/05, Ken Oliver <ksterling at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: husker-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:husker-bounces at tssi.com] On Behalf
> Of Mark J Norris
> Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 12:36 PM
> To: husker at tssi.com
> Subject: Re: [Husker] WSJ - Sept 30th
>
>
>
> -- Kurt Holst <kurtholst at netzero.net> wrote:
> One
> thing I couldn't tell from the article was what college players were
> tested to compile the college rankings, or if they just used scores from
>
> players tested at the NFL combine.
>
> --
>
> The average scores, with number of players tested in parentheses, and
> graduation rates of players who took the Wonderlic test in the last
> seven years:
> 24 Georgia 19.8 (39) 53
> 26 Texas 19.7 (28) 34
> 27 North Carolina St. 19.6 (21) 42
> 28 Florida State 19.4 (47) 49
> 29 Oklahoma 19 (343) 40
> 30 North Carolina 18.9 (24) 53
> 31 Arkansas 18.6 (27) 35
> 32 Auburn 18.5 (28) 48
> 32 Louisiana State 18.5 (31) 42
> 34 Clemson 18.3 (21) 51
> 35 Alabama 18.2 (28) 49
> 36 South Carolina 17.9 (21) 54
> 37 Tennessee 17.7 (46) 38
> 38 Michigan State 16.6 (28) 41
> 39 Miami 16.3 (40) 57
> ====================================================
> How come all the SEC teams seem to be clustered together???
>
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