Research suggests depression assessment questionnaires can’t reliably compare people with differing intelligence

Psychologists have found that two common questionnaires for assessing depression don’t work for comparing people of differing intelligence—and the problem may extend to other conditions and traits.

For a recent study in the journal Intelligence, Stanisław Czerwiński of the University of Gdańsk in Poland and his colleagues investigated how intelligence correlates with mental health. They hypothesized that the association between intelligence and better mental health starts out positive as it approaches the high end of the IQ scale, then turns negative.

The data revealed the curved relation the researchers were expecting: the highest intelligence levels seemed to be associated with declines in mental health. But then the scientists found a problem. To make sure their results were valid, they ran statistics tests to determine whether the mental health measures work the same for people at different intelligence levels, in part by calculating whether responses to individual questions reflect depression to the same extent for everybody. Both scales failed this test, meaning they can’t be used to compare people with differing intelligence—and conclusions like this study’s can’t be trusted.

  • hdnclr@beehaw.org
    4·
    3 days ago

    I’m curious whether there’s a better way to quantify intelligence for studies like this (where you need to be able to quantify it to be able to spot correlations and patterns in the data…)

    Like, all my life, I’ve only heard of IQ being a quantification of intelligence, and that the methods to estimate it are all flawed and based on racialist assumptions. Is there anyone in our modern scientific landscape that’s coming up with a replacement for IQ? It’s probably overdue…

    • ByteSorcerer@beehaw.org
      5·
      2 days ago

      I think intelligence is just something too complex to summarise in a single number. Any attempt to do so will always either have big flaws and biases, or be too broad to be meaningful.

      I’d consider it equivalent to trying to put a number on how “skilled” someone is. Like, skilled at what? What skills are you going to test and how are you going to balance them?
      Different types of intelligence are more abstract than different skills but I think it’s as meaningless to try to express the whole thing with a single number.

      And I’m saying this as someone who’s recently diagnosed with an IQ of 138 (had to do an IQ test as a part of a job application), which is above average, so I’m not saying this because I’m salty about my own IQ score.