Myth and Reality: A review of empirical studies on giftedness

In this review all empirically based articles published in the years 1997 and 1998 in five acclaimed journals in the field of research of high ability and talent will be compared. For this purpose several questions will be taken into consideration, including the problems of the identification procedures used, the predominating research questions and the quality of the methodological standards. The results show that it is difficult to compare the studies due to the various procedures used to identify giftedness. In contrast, regarding the thematic orientation of the research studies themselves, the existence of a virulent problem in gifted research could be confirmed. The methodological standards adhered to in the studies give rise to troubling thoughts, possibly the most worrisome outcome being that the integration of a control group occurred in less than one-quarter of the studies. A definitive result of the study is the confirmation that gifted research is conducted within the framework of a fragmented research community where studies are performed under various methodological viewpoints, which are often unsatisfactory. The appearance of approximately one new publication per day is accompanied by the dangers of a metamorphosis of quality into pure quantity and the loss of any sort of conceptual overview. The aim of this article is, therefore, to determine whether these suspicions can be substantiated specifically regarding theoretical and methodological aspects of empirical studies in giftedness research.