Terriot, Katia
Are self- and other-assessments alternatives to traditional psychometric measures of intelligence? A twenty-five-year literature review
- 2017.
19
The most widely used intelligence tests in the world today test performance, but are they the only way to evaluate cognitive abilities? Other methodologies exist, in particular self- and other-assessments, which consist of asking the subjects themselves or people around them either to estimate their degree of intelligence directly, or to evaluate their ability to carry out certain cognitive tasks. The examination of the literature reveals that, although they present some evidence of validity and reliability, these methodologies cannot replace performance tests, the correlations between the two seldom exceeding 0.30. It is more likely that they measure different constructs. Nevertheless, in a manner complementary to intelligence tests, self- and other-assessments allow us to increase the predicted amount of variance in academic success, as well as other conative variables, such as motivation, self-esteem, and self-efficacy beliefs. They also appear interesting from a personal development perspective in terms of confronting perceptions of the subject or those of people around them with the objective data provided by the test.