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Doubts about ‘underachievement‘, particularly as operationalized by Yule, Lansdown & Urbanowicz
Author(s) -
Wood Robert
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
british journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0144-6657
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1984.tb00652.x
Subject(s) - operationalization , psychology , value (mathematics) , social psychology , educational attainment , developmental psychology , epistemology , statistics , mathematics , philosophy , economics , economic growth
A paper by Yule, Lansdown & Urbanowicz (1982) purports to be about predicting educational attainment but is really about underachievement, operationalized in a certain mechanical way. This paper, and one in the same genre by McLeod (1982), are challenged on several grounds, which need to be convincingly rebutted for the operationalization to have any value. It is worrying, too, that if the paper is to be judged for what it purports to be, the prediction equations it offers are quite indifferent, the n is too small to be useful (167), and WISC‐R is a poorer predictor of some measures of achievement than are other measures of achievement. Finally it is suggested that the relationship between measured intelligence and achievement is far from being straightforward, as a recent court case illustrates.