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The IQ score derives from standardized tests, designed to assess human intelligence. Multiple IQ tests have been developed by several researchers which aim to measure intelligence, focusing on various related skills and attributes, such as verbal skills, mathematical understanding, visual skills, short-term memory, pattern recognition, analytical thinking, and spatial orientation.

French psychologist Alfred Binet, together with psychologists Théodore Simon and Victor Henri, were the first to publish an IQ test in 1905, (Binet-Simon test). It was designed to measure a child’s intelligence and compare it to what his/her intelligence “should be”, related to the child’s actual age.

Since then, a variety of individually administered IQ tests have been developed and being constantly updated. Researchers on intelligence have stated that IQ Tests are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments

How Accurate are IQ Tests?

IQ tests measure your score relative to others so accuracy depends upon the quality of data being used to calculate scores. Many online IQ tests standardize scores based upon online test takers which for a number of reasons do not provide an accurate data set on which to base scoring.

Scores from intelligence tests are estimates of intelligence. Unlike, for example, distance and mass, a concrete measure of intelligence cannot be achieved given the abstract nature of the concept of "intelligence". IQ scores have been shown to be associated with such factors as morbidity and mortality, parental social status, and, to a substantial degree, biological parental IQ. While the heritability of IQ has been investigated for nearly a century, there is still debate about the significance of heritability estimates and the mechanisms of inheritance.