New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment is set to launch this week the first India-made Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test to assess and certify intellectual disability in children (3-18 years).
Developed by the National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (NEIPID) in Secunderabad, the test will replace the currently used western tests that have been standardised to a large extent in line with the Indian experience, but are still considered not entirely suitable.
“We will launch the Indian test for IQ this week, which will be used to assess intellectual disability,” Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary for the ministry’s department of empowerment of persons with disabilities (DEPwD), told ThePrint.
“Till now, we were using a western test for IQ, which is not very relevant in the Indian context. We have got written permission from the health ministry to roll out this test,” he added.
The NEIPID Test of Intelligence is designed according to the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of the Indian population after an extensive survey across the country, said institute director Major B.V. Ram Kumar (Retd).
The test is crucial for certification of persons with intellectual disability, one of the 21 disabilities recognised in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act of 2016, and can be used to assess autism-spectrum disorders, specific learning disorders etc. The disability certification, based on which a Unique Disability ID (UDID) is issued, helps persons with disabilities avail of benefits under various government schemes.
“We started work on this project in 2018. Initially, it was to be completed within three years, but due to Covid we had to stall the project as it requires one-on-one interaction with children in the age group of 3-18 years,” said Kumar.
“We surveyed 4,070 children in 12 states spread across six National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) zones to collect data. The Indian Test of Intelligence was finalised on 31 May this year and presented before experts for review,” he added.
He said that the data was peer-reviewed by experts from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, and the University of Delhi, among others. “We made a presentation before a committee appointed by the Directorate General of Health Services under the Union health ministry, which recently approved the test,” Kumar added.
Kumar said, initially, only NEIPID-certified professionals “will be able to issue disability certificates using the indigenous test”.
“We will carry out training of psychiatrists and psychologists across the country and the plan is to replace the western tests in a phased manner in two-three years,” he added.
To that end, NEIPID started a five-day training programme for psychologists and psychiatrists at the institute Sunday.
Experts say that there has been a longstanding demand for an indigenous test to assess intellectual disability, as the tests in use are not in sync with the Indian social and cultural conditions despite having been standardised.
For instance, said Kumar, “The latest edition of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) or Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-4) India was standardised in 2008 but on a very limited sample, which cannot be generalised to our very wide and varied Indian population. There are questions in these tests that are not related to our social, cultural conditions.”
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‘Relevant in Indian context’
According to experts, most of the existing tests are adaptations of the Binet-Kamat Test of Intelligence, which was developed in 1934 and modified in 1967. These tests are over 70 years old.
The NIEPID Test of Intelligence has items or questions keeping in view Indian social and cultural conditions. The pictures shown during assessment are more relatable socially than other tests.
The WISC-IV India (adapted version), for instance, includes pictures of a jacuzzi, a concept not relatable for children from rural or even many urban households in India. “In NEIPID Test of Intelligence, all pictures, names, questions are according to the Indian context,” said Kumar.
Experts also say that there is a need to assess the daily functioning of a person with disability, which can be done based on the inputs provided by their caretaker.
Dr Nimesh Desai, former director of Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, a Delhi government hospital, said, “There was a need for an indigenous test. According to the rules of RPwD Act 2016, the social quotient has to be tested and the disability evaluation based on it. I don’t know what the NEIPID test is but I feel that the testing, scoring, certification and planning of services for persons with intellectual disability has to be more function-based than intelligence-test-based.”
The new test is based on five factors: knowledge, fluid reasoning, quantitative reasoning, visual spatial reasoning and working memory, said Dr Saroj Arya, former associate professor & head of the department for rehabilitation psychology, NIEPID, who has worked on this project.
Stressing how the old tests are dated, Arya said today’s generation is technologically more advanced and is able to learn things earlier. “What a four- or a five-year-old kid could learn or understand (earlier), a three-year-old can understand (now). It is also important to know what a three-year-old can learn to be accurate to test the mental age of kids with intellectual disability,” she said.
She added, “Recent trends in intellectual assessment, both in India and worldwide, suggest that most of the existing tests reflect gaps in informational, technological and global advancement that would have impacted the current age population. Hence, there is a need for a new approach to the science of intelligence.”
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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