Racial and ethnic bias in psychological tests: Divergent implications of two definitions of test bias.

Examines the 2 most widely accepted definitions of unfair test bias. A. Cleary in 1968 defined unfair test bias in terms of consistent under- or overprediction of actual performance levels of minority or majority groups. R. L. Thorndike's 1971 definition holds that a test is unfairly biased whenever the difference between the minority and majority groups is greater on the test than on actual performance. These 2 definitions, which superficially appear to be similar, are shown to be very different in their implications for minority selection. It is demonstrated that whenever test validity is less than perfect and mean majority criterion performance is higher than that of the minority group, Thorndike's definition leads to acceptance of a larger percentage of minority group members than does the Cleary definition. A review and reanalysis of published research on test bias suggests that most conventional test usages are unbiased by Cleary's definition but unfair by Thorndike's criteria. Advantages and disadvantages of both concepts of unfair test bias are discussed. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)