Wells' proposed equally-difficult easy list was not fully standardized, with sick, open, and glad producing non-uniform responses¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r1 · q3
Currency · newest study 1911 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Thirteen of Wells' stimulus words occurred in the authors' lists, and responses to sick, open, and glad were far less uniform than to the other ten words. → Irving King and Hugo Gold 1911

Evidence¶

Irving King and Hugo Gold 1911¶

Irving King and Hugo Gold. (1911). A Tentative Standardization of Certain "Opposites Tests". University of Iowa. https://eric.ed.gov/?q=A+Tentative+Standardization+of+Certain+Opposites+Tests

q3 · i? · associational · r1

Comparison of Wells' list against the authors' frequency table for 100 subjects: sick drew 12 healthy and 40 closed responses, open drew 57 shut, and glad drew 40 sad and 21 unhappy, while words like heavy, high, and wet drew near-unanimous correct opposites.

"From the above it appears that Wells is not wholly right in his expectation of uniform results from the lists which he proposes. If he should leave out the words sick, open, and glad he could reasonable expect fairly uniform results from the other ten words."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Standardized easy opposites lists can be built from words answered correctly by ninety percent or more of subjects — related
• A graded hard-opposites list of twenty-five words was selected where accuracy of response was below 69% — related
• The two word lists were confirmed to be of equal difficulty before practice, with a correlation of +.93 between performance on the two lists — related
• The six 100-word spelling lists are practically identical in difficulty, differing from list 1 by .9 to 3.4 points — related
• Question E was answered by all 27 high-school pupils, establishing a zero-difficulty reference 2.191 units below the median — related