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

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

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All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from: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