[Review of the book The essentials of mental measurement

Abstract

Reviews the book, The essentials of mental measurement by William Brown and Godfrey H. Thomson (1925). The first edition of The Essentials of Mental Measurement appeared in 1911; it was written by Dr. Brown. The second edition, produced ten years later by Dr. Thomson, was a thorough revision of the first edition in some two-thirds of its contents Such revision as is incorporated in the 1925 edition appears in the form of footnotes and a brief appended chapter in which the authors state their present position (1924) on controversial matters. The interest of Americans in this book is probably due as much to its contributions to statistical techniques as to concern over theories of intelligence. To be sure, as the title suggests, statistics is not the book's reason for being but references to the book in American writing as an authority on statistical procedures probably outnumber those made in discussions of theories of intelligence. And when the dispute over General Factors versus Specific Factors has waned the treatment of statistical method will quite rightly continue to attract students of psychology and education. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)