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The SAT was first given in 1941, and, although the questions are continually changed, they have been designed to remain equivalent. Thus, it is possible to compare the scores of students who take the test each year with those of previous years. In the 1960s and 1970s the SAT scores dropped significantly. This has been attributed partly to the fact that in the 1960s more students who were not as academically prepared took the test to get into college (Astin & Barber, 1982).
Zajonc (1986) proposed that the decline in SAT scores was due to the large number of postwar babies born in the 1940s and 1950s, since, as the number of children in a family increase, the family's resources must be spread out and each child would have a slightly lower IQ than in only-child families. He also predicted that as families became smaller in the 1960s, the scores would increase in the late 1980s (which is what happened). |
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