CHAPTER 15. 



INTELLIGENCE EATINGS OF OCCUPATIONAL GBOTJPS. 



The relationship between intelligence as measured by the Army psychological examina- 

 tions and various occupational groups was a by-product of the development of the Army 

 psychological work. Serious study of this relationship was not attempted in the early months 

 largely because the attention of the psychological examiners was not called to the possible uses of 

 intelligence ratings in connection with the occupational classification and placement of men. 

 A number of studies had been made, however, prior to the signing of the armistice and the 

 indications are that they would have been carried still further had not the military situation 

 changed so radically. 



The first study reported was made at Camp Dix during October, 1917. It is concerned 

 with the relationship between intelligence (examination a), skill (Stenquist skill test), wages 

 (earnings prior to entering the Army), and nineteen occupations. Table 373 gives the 204 

 cases showing the relationship between average scores in intelligence and the nineteen reported 

 occupations. 



Table 373. 



-Intelligence and occupation. Average scores in examination "a" according to occupation, Camp Dix, October, 



1917, arranged in rank order. 



It is obvious that the number of cases involved in the table is too small to justify positive 

 conclusions regarding intelligence differences among various occupations. The average scores 

 are also unreliable because no method was available for measuring the intelligence of foreigners 

 and illiterates; any such cases included in the study were thus unfairly scored 0. 



No attempt was made to interpret the possible uses of such a table beyond a suggestion 

 that the many contradictions between intelligence scores and wages would enable the personnel 

 officers to use intelligence scores as a partial guide in judging the abdity of men; the assumption 

 was that a wage-criterion of abdity is unreliable. 



The next study, reported from Camp Lee, was based upon 2,707 soldiers in the Three 



hundred and twentieth and Three hundred and eighteenth Regiments; 35 occupations were 



represented by more than ten cases each. The quartde values were not determined and the 



range of intelligence scores in any particular occupational group is therefore unknown. The 



average scores for the various occupations listed do not represent accurate measures of the 



mental abdity of the representatives in carnp (or elsewhere) of those occupations for the reason 



that they are based upon the performances of literate white men only (illiterates and foreigners 



are excluded from the study because no means was avadable at that time for measuring their 



intelligence). (See table 374.) 



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