I have always wondered how test developers make sure a question is not accidentally biased toward a certain culture or background. Some tests claim to be more “culture fair,” but I do not fully understand how that is checked in practice.
Do they test the items on groups from different language backgrounds? Do they remove items if one group consistently interprets them differently? And how do they decide whether an image, word, or instruction carries cultural meaning that could tilt the results?
Test developers use something called DIF (Differential Item Functioning) analysis, they test questions on diverse groups and remove any that one culture finds easier or harder than another, even when ability levels are equal. They also have cultural experts review items beforehand. For culture-fair tests like Raven’s, they skip language entirely and use abstract patterns. But honestly, no test is 100% culture-free even visual puzzles favor people with more education or puzzle experience. The goal is minimizing bias, not eliminating it completely, because true culture-neutrality is basically impossible.
Honestly? They often fail. A lot of ‘cultural’ bias is actually socio-economic bias. If a question asks you to complete a pattern, but you grew up with Legos and puzzles while another kid grew up without toys, you have an advantage. That’s not ‘culture’ in the ethnic sense, but it’s definitely a background cue that influences the answer. Developers try to norm against this, but it’s the hardest variable to control for.
There are a few ways to make sure that test questions are not biased against a cultural group. Statistical procedures have been developed to test whether specific items are systematically easier or harder for people solely beause of their group membership. It’s standard practice to screen every item for bias before releasing a test.
That being said, it’s impossible to screen every item for bias against every possible human cultural group. There are thousands of languages and human cultures, and it isn’t feasible to test every item on every group. So, test creators specify which group(s) their test has been piloted on. For example, with the RIOT, we state that the test is designed for native English-speaking adults who were born in the United States. Now, it’s likely that there are other groups (e.g., Canadians, people who immigrated to the U.S. as children, gifted teenagers) that the test works on also, but that hasn’t been investigated yet. The RIOT team makes no claims about cultural fairness with those groups, though we are planning on studies on other groups in the future to see if the RIOT functions in an unbiased manner for them, too.
Maybe the deeper issue is why we’re so invested in culture-fair tests in the first place. The desire for culture-fairness assumes there’s a pure, universal intelligence underneath cultural variation that we can isolate and measure. But what if cognitive abilities are fundamentally shaped by cultural practices in ways that can’t be separated? The effort to remove cultural influence might be trying to measure something that doesn’t exist. The premise itself might be questionable.