Richard Lynn Intelligence database: Becker edition

 

Whereas there are many very well funded projects which study national and international scholastic ability without mentioning intelligence, there is one database for the national intelligence of the countries of the world, and that was put together by one person, unfunded, working in his study. Prof Richard Lynn gathered together the very disparate studies which mention the nationality of test takers, and assembled them into one database.

David Becker, who works with Prof Heiner Rindermann at the Technical University of Chemnitz, Germany, has taken on the task of going through all the results and tracking down the references, an enormous labour. We want a copy of each reference, so that everything can be checked. David is a research student studying for his Masters and has been concentrating on cross-national differences in ability, their consequences, and their possible origins in early human migration. Unusually for our effete profession, he had an honest trade before he entered Psychology. He is a fully trained butcher (three years of training) and worked in that profession for two years, so has skills which will stand him in good stead in research, as he cleaves fatty residues away from good meat.

Here are two references to introduce you to his work:

Becker, D., & Rindermann, H. (2016). The relationship between cross-national genetic distances and IQ-differences. Personality and Individual Differences, 98, 300-310.

Rindermann, H., Becker, D., & Coyle, Th. R. (2016). Survey of expert opinion on intelligence: Causes of international differences in cognitive ability tests. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 399.

The database gives the Country, the age of the testees, the N, the test, the IQ, the short and the full reference, and then a column indicating whether we have an copy  of the reference (Y or N). Occasionally there are question marks where a reference has not been traced.

This is where you come in. Have a look at the list, and if you have a copy of the papers, send David Becker a scan of them.

Also, if you have extra papers which have not been included (we know that some of you have been extending the database considerably) please get in touch so that we can put everything, duly acknowledged, into one document. Here is how you email David Becker.  Write his name in lowercase, first and second name separated by a dot, then put in the eponymous at symbol, followed by “s2009.tu-chemnitz.de”

Now for the download. Use the following link, and you have the world at your fingertips. Every time you listen to the news, your can look up the IQ results for the relevant country, and draw your own conclusions.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3c4TxciNeJZNUVaZ0VhZ3dUMkk/view?usp=sharing