The measurement of individual differences in general English vocabularies.

BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEMIn attempting to answer the apparently simple question, "How many words do you know," numerous investigations have discovered that individual vocabularies, from childhood to maturity, are much larger than we have previously thought.It is not at all uncommon for an educated adult to estimate his own vocabulary at a figure which is only one to ten per cent of the results obtained from accurate measurement.But in spite of the general agreement on the relatively large size of measured vocabularies, there is an almost equally wide variation in the absolute size of vocabularies studied, even for comparable groups.This suggests the need of a careful analysis of definitions and methods to determine the sources of such variations, and to set up a more reliable method for such measurements.But beyond the interest in the mere size of vocabularies and their measurement there are many significant relations of vocabulary to problems of psychology, education, and literature.In a figurative way it might even be said that words, or the concepts for which they stand, are the coin of the realm of knowledge.These units of knowledge may be accurately defined, classified, and their numbers counted so that they give an inventory of the raw materials among our intellectual resources.When supplemented by measures of various skills, we may then estimate a person's effectiveness in dealing with various problems, both theoretical and practical.Some of these relationships between vocabulary and other factors have already been measured, but the real significance of these and similar problems can best be indicated by a careful analysis of the background and methods of the experiments themselves. A. Analysis of Major Variables Definition and Classification of Words as Units of Measurement.For the purposes of our study we may begin by defining the unit of 14 * Such a comparison will be reported in a later study.The problem is complicated by the fact that there are many other types of variations besides those counted by Thorndike's syBtem.