Does IQ Really Predict Job Performance?

IQ has played a prominent part in developmental and adult psychology for decades. In the absence of a clear theoretical model of internal cognitive functions, however, construct validity for IQ tests has always been difficult to establish. Test validity, therefore, has always been indirect, by correlating individual differences in test scores with what are assumed to be other criteria of intelligence. Job performance has, for several reasons, been one such criterion. Correlations of around 0.5 have been regularly cited as evidence of test validity, and as justification for the use of the tests in developmental studies, in educational and occupational selection and in research programs on sources of individual differences. Here, those correlations are examined together with the quality of the original data and the many corrections needed to arrive at them. It is concluded that considerable caution needs to be exercised in citing such correlations for test validation purposes.