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Culture-Fair Tests

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Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology

Introduction

Discrepancies in outcomes between racial and cultural groups have long been attained across a range of tests, though these results were not always assumed to reflect cultural bias. Early discrepancies in intelligence testing were treated as proof of White racial superiority, and in some cases, fraudulent research was produced to support those beliefs (Guthrie, 1997). The concept of culture-fair testing only gained prominence in the 1960s, as explicit beliefs of White racial supremacy and male superiority began to lose power as a result of the civil rights and feminist movements. Although feminist and racial minority scholars had long criticized the misapplication and misinterpretation of psychological and educational tests, the effort to identify and eliminate bias from tests is still ongoing.

Definition

According to Zurcher (1998), culture-fair testing, often referred to as “culture-free” or “unbiased” testing, is designed to provide scores that truly reflect the...

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Correspondence to Geoff J. Bathje .

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Bathje, G.J., Feiss, C. (2014). Culture-Fair Tests. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_371

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_371

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5582-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5583-7

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