The Role of Non-Cognitive Factors in the SAT Remains Unclear: A Commentary on Hannon (2019)

Abstract

In the current issue of the Journal of Intelligence, Hannon (2019) reports a novel and intriguing pattern of results that could be interpreted as evidence that the SAT is biased against Hispanic students. Specifically, Hannon’s analyses suggest that non-cognitive factors, such as test anxiety, contribute to SAT performance and the impact of test anxiety on the SAT is stronger among Hispanic students than European-American students. Importantly, this pattern of results was observed after controlling for individual differences in cognitive abilities. We argue that there are multiple issues with Hannon’s investigation and interpretation. For instance, Hannon did not include an adequate number or variety of measures of cognitive ability. In addition, the measure of test anxiety was a retrospective self-report survey on evaluated anxiety rather than a direct measure of situational test anxiety associated with the SAT. Based on these and other observations, we conclude that Hannon’s current results do not provide sufficient evidence to suggest that non-cognitive factors play a significant role in the SAT or that they impact European-American and Hispanic students differently.

Flexibility to Change the Solution: An Indicator of Problem Solving That Predicted 9th Grade Students’ Academic Achievement during Distance Learning, in Parallel to Reasoning Abilities and Parental Education

“…Moreover, previous studies have shown that cognitive abilities assessed with tests are indeed the strongest predictor of academic performance (e.g., Demetriou et al 2019 ; Frey 2019 ; Kampa et al 2021 ), though the contribution is lower for older students compared to younger students. Conway and Hao ( 2020 ) argue for the need for precise methodologies if we want to assess the relation between non-cognitive factors and SAT scores. The authors argue that cognitive test scores typically explain at least half of the variation in SAT tests, if cognitive measurements have been adequately selected and cover a full range of abilities.…”