The international cognitive ability resource: Development and initial validation of a public-domain measure

For all of its versatility and sophistication, the extant toolkit of cognitive ability measures lacks a public-domain method for large-scale, remote data collection. While the lack of copyright protection for such a measure poses a theoretical threat to test validity, the effective magnitude of this threat is unknown and can be offset by the use of modern test-development techniques. To the extent that validity can be maintained, the benefits of a public-domain resource are considerable for researchers, including: cost savings; greater control over test content; and the potential for more nuanced understanding of the correlational structure between constructs. The International Cognitive Ability Resource was developed to evaluate the prospects for such a public-domain measure and the psychometric properties of the first four item types were evaluated based on administrations to both an offline university sample and a large online sample. Concurrent and discriminative validity analyses suggest that the public-domain status of these item types did not compromise their validity despite administration to 97,000 participants. Further development and validation of extant and additional item types are recommended. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.