Sure, the reason is that they want to do something that is "the same" as what they've done in the past, so that previous research will remain as valid as they hope it is.

My mother is an obstetrician, and something that has always bothered her is that American hospitals have women lie on their backs to give birth. This is not a natural position, it's not comfortable for the women, and it can make it more difficult to get the baby out.

So why do we do it?

The answer is that, a long time ago, doctors who assumed that that was the correct way to give birth developed a set of standard measurements that determine what doctors today think of how far into the labor process a woman is. These measurements are only valid for a woman lying on her back - they will change if she shifts positions. They would have to be redone and revalidated for a woman in a natural delivery position. And nobody wants to do that.

The SAT correlates as well with any given IQ test as other, "official" IQ tests do. It is an IQ test. It serves all of the purposes that IQ tests serve, and it cannot serve any purpose that they can't.

It is more accurate than some very standard "accepted IQ tests" such as Draw-a-Man. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw-a-Person_test )

But it's important to some people not to call it an IQ test. Try not to be one of those people.

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tptacek 2 days ago | parent [-]

Not a hill I'm going to die on, but the SAT has many attributes IQ-ists insist IQ tests are insulated from: it's straightforwardly trainable, culturally loaded, samples only math, processing speed, and verbal reasoning, and tracks prior educational experience as much as it does aptitude.

Draw-a-Person basically isn't an IQ test at all, so I don't see how that comparison clears anything up.

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thaumasiotes 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Not a hill I'm going to die on, but the SAT has many attributes IQ-ists insist IQ tests are insulated from

This is false. In particular:

> it's straightforwardly trainable

No, it isn't. There is an extensive literature on SAT prep, finding that it's worth a couple of points on the test. It is widely described as being trainable, but the opposite was always a design goal, and historically that goal was achieved very well.

You might note that the Raven's matrices are infamous for huge training effects; that test relies on the testee having never seen it before. The SAT doesn't.

> culturally loaded

This claim is true, but nobody claims that IQ tests are insulated from being culturally loaded. The purpose of Raven's is to be a culture-free test. Wechsler makes no such pretense.

> samples only math, processing speed, and verbal reasoning

I'm not sure what you're saying here.

> and tracks prior educational experience as much as it does aptitude.

And this one is false. The point of the SAT is to test only low-level material so that you can be confident the entire test-taking population has been exposed to the material. Aptitude has a very large influence on SAT score; prior education has a negligible influence.

(Prior education will have a larger influence if the population you're investigating includes a lot of people with no education, the kind of people who left school after or before kindergarten. But that scenario isn't relevant to... pretty much any question about the SAT.)

> Draw-a-Person basically isn't an IQ test at all, so I don't see how that comparison clears anything up.

It is an IQ test by the standard you defined: it holds itself out as being "an IQ test", and it is used by researchers to study the intelligence of testees. Did you want to use a different definition?

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tptacek 2 days ago | parent [-]

Now I think you're the one defending a weird hill, because math is like half of the SAT, and trig is a learned skill, not a general cognitive ability.

	▲	thaumasiotes 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		There is no trigonometry on the SAT. Are you thinking of the subject tests? They don't differ in psychometric properties from the general SAT, but they do require more education before they make sense.