Mental differences in certain immigrant groups : psychological tests of south Europeans in typical California schools with bearing on the educational policy and on the problems of racial contacts in this country / by Kimball Young.

  • Kimball Young
Date:
[1922]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Mental differences in certain immigrant groups : psychological tests of south Europeans in typical California schools with bearing on the educational policy and on the problems of racial contacts in this country / by Kimball Young. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/106 page 11
    D. The Administration and Scoring of the Tests. The tests were given by the writer himself. All precautions possible to make for uniformity of conditions were taken. Venti lation, lighting, presentation of test material itself—these and allied factors were carefully guarded. Alpha was usually given first, followed by beta within the same week or at the outside two weeks later. The children were selected by means of teachers’ registers, as well as by enquiring of children themselves the facts on their ages. In doubtful cases, school nurses and principals were called in to determine from parents the child’s age. Out of nearly 1000 children tested, only 20 children were eliminated for ages incorrectly given. If a child missed one of the two tests, attempts were made as soon as he returned to school to test him. The children manifested keen interest in the whole procedure. Discipline and esprit de corps were excellent. The groups were usually of fifty or less. Only in two instances did the writer attempt, with the help of teachers and fellow graduate students, to give the test to as many as 100 children at once. There is no evidence whatever that the administration of the tests by a stranger had any detrimental effects. The writer became a very familiar person about the school buildings and grounds during the course of an entire school year and the children were always courteous and interested in what he was doing. The tests were scored by trained assistants and by the writer himself. Later the computations in individual tests were checked on adding machine, and a large random sample of the tests them selves were re-scored. Errors were slight if any. E. The Materials. The following tables present the raw data of the study grouped into convenient units. 7 “S. J. American” refers to the children of North European ancestry from San Jose, California; “S. J. Italian” refers to the South Italians from the San Jose schools; “Miscella neous American’’ refers to the children of Northern European ancestry from the other localities outside of San Jose; “Miscellane ous Italian” in similar fashion comprises the South Italians from communities other than San Jose. For Portuguese and Spanish- Mexican children they came at random from all the localities. 8 7 Except for the distribution in grades which is given in percentages in the next chapter. 8 The San Jose American and San Jose Italian children were kept separate for com parative purposes. And the Miscellaneous groups furnished control groups for checking on results from San Jose. Mise, will be used to abbreviate Miscellaneous. A will be used in some instances as an abbreviation of alpha, and B for beta. Statistical abbreviations follow common practice. [H]
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3