Cultural Bias in Assessment: Historical and Thematic Issues

In this introductory article the development of ideas on cultural bias in tests since the sixties is briefly reviewed and three approaches are mentioned. A distinction is made between the tradition of culture fair use of tests that is directed more towards selection in a multicultural society and the tradition of cross-cultural comparison that is concerned more with theoretical questions about cultural differences in behavior. The concerns of the former tradition have formed the main impetus for the development of psychometric analysis techniques. It is argued that some key problems of bias cannot be solved by further sophistication of statistical procedures, suggesting that a broadening of perspective in the field of bias analysis is desirable. Directions in which this can be achieved are indicated.