veiled4allah: standardized tests about bias - are they biased?

Today in my Civil Rights Law class, we took some tests at the Tolerance.org site that are supposed to detect hidden bias against various groups of people. At least half the class, myself included, thought that the test was as much of dexterity as anything else.

The way each test works is that there are two groups of people and two concepts. You're shown a picture or a word and have to select which group or concept it fits in, as fast as you can. For example, one of the tests that I took was the one about Age Bias. The groups are old people and young people and the concepts are good and bad. So first I had to match pictures as representing old or young people, then words as representing good or bad concepts. The names of the groups or concepts are on the left or right of the screen and I had to select left or right as matching. At first it seems relatively straightforward. Then they put the group or concept that was on the left on the right and run you through it again. Then they have both a group and a concept listed and either a picture or a word is shown. Then they switch around what's paired with what and what side of the screen it's on.

If, like me, your hand-eye coordination is at best average, or if you lose your concentration and don't pay attention to what's where, you will have a hard time adjusting to the changes and your response time will be slower.

The idea behind the test is that if you have a bias, for instance that old people are bad, you'll respond faster when old is paired with bad and slower when old is paired with good.

But it seems more likely that the test is only measuring how good you are at taking the test. This led us into an interesting discussion, encouraged by the instructor, about standardized tests. Do they really measure anything other than how good you are at taking the test? How do you feel when you're faced with a limited number of options, none of which match what you think the answer should be?

Apparently, these hidden bias tests are supposed to be highly regarded but neither the class nor the instructor thought they were all that great. Better for provoking discussion than for anything else.

If you have a high-speed connection and your browser can run Java applets, give the tests a try and let me know what you think, inshallah.