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Public Domain · 1936

Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Tests: Otis's machine-scoreable successor

Arthur Otis's 1936 redesign of his original 1918 Group Intelligence Scale. The Quick-Scoring version simplified administration (machine-scoreable), shortened the test (30 minutes instead of an hour), and dominated the US school market through the 1950s. The Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test (still in use) is its direct descendant.

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About the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Tests

By the early 1930s, Arthur Otis's 1918 Group Intelligence Scale had been the dominant school IQ test for nearly 15 years. But schools were demanding something faster and cheaper to administer. The 1936 redesign was Otis's answer.

The Quick-Scoring redesign made three changes: (1) all items were converted to a uniform multiple-choice format on a single answer sheet, allowing the test to be machine-scored; (2) the test was shortened to about 30 minutes; (3) the manual provided clearer norms and grade-conversion tables. The Quick-Scoring version was available in three levels (Alpha for grades 1-4, Beta for grades 4-9, Gamma for grades 9-12 and adults).

By 1945 the Otis Quick-Scoring was being administered to more than 4 million American schoolchildren a year. It was eventually revised as the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test (1967, with multiple later editions), which is still in active commercial use through Pearson.

The 6 subtests

#1
Following Directions Written instructions to mark specific items.
Interactive
#2
Vocabulary / Opposites Pick the word that means the opposite (or the synonym).
Interactive
#3
Reasoning by Analogies Standard 'A is to B as C is to ?' analogies.
Interactive
#4
Arithmetic Reasoning Word problems of increasing difficulty.
Interactive
#5
Verbal Classification Pick the word that does NOT belong in the group.
Interactive
#6
Number Series Continue a number sequence.
Interactive

Take the interactive subset

Sample items from the Otis Quick-Scoring 1936 Beta-level format. Items shown are typical of the difficulty used for grades 4-9.

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About these items: These Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Tests items are originally-written reconstructions in the tradition of the original 1936 test, NOT verbatim copies of the historical items. Where the original is a 1-on-1 oral or physical-apparatus test (e.g., examiner shows a card, child draws a shape), we have adapted the format to self-administered multiple choice.

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Otis, A. S. (1936-1939). Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Tests. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Company. Multiple forms and levels.

Public domain in the United States (US works pre-1929 are PD; later Otis works require copyright check; the 1936 manual is widely available without copyright restriction).

Cite this page

This page is part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content, transcription notes, and curation are released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Public-domain primary sources retain their public-domain status. BibTeX · RIS

Historical test materials are obsolete and are not valid modern IQ assessments. This page is preserved for educational, research, and historiographic purposes.

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The instrument documented above is a historical document. Modern IQ scoring uses contemporary norms (mean 100, SD 15). Our free full IQ test is available separately.