Tests of Scholastic Aptitude Cover Reasoning Facets Sufficiently

Schult, Johannes
Fischer, Franziska T.
Hell, Benedikt

Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
University of Konstanz, Germany

This work was supported by a grant by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant Agreement Number: 01FP0930) and the European Social Fund of the European Union awarded to Benedikt Hell. Parts of the raw data used in the present study have been previously analyzed in a different context in ^,).

Johannes Schult Saarland University Campus A5 4 66123 Saarbrücken [email protected]

Accepted October 8, 2014

European Journal of Psychological Assessment 32(3):p 215-219, 2016. | DOI: 10.1027/1015-5759/a000247

This study explores how reasoning facets relate to tests of scholastic aptitude and to academic performance. Intelligence test scores and academic aptitude test scores from freshman students in science (n = 284) and economics (n = 359) as well as subsequent grades from their first year in college were used to analyze structural equation models. The direct influence of reasoning facets on academic performance is fully mediated by academic aptitude test scores. Numeric abilities dominate the aptitude tests’ predictive power. Verbal reasoning explains a significant amount of aptitude test score variance in science but not in economics. The mediation analysis suggests that verbal, numeric, and figural reasoning are covered sufficiently by the aptitude tests.