A study of test speededness as a potential source of bias in the quantitative score of the Admission Test for Graduate Study in Business

Minority and majority groups were administered a special quantitative section of the Admission Test for Graduate Study in Business (ATGSB) under varying time conditions to determine if increasing the time allotted for the test would eliminate any bias that may exist due to an irrelevant speed factor. By a commonly employed definition, the special section was found to be moderately speeded for all candidates under normal time conditions. Neither the main effects due to time condition nor the interaction between the ethnic and time factors was statistically significant, suggesting that increasing the time per item does not reduce any bias that may exist in the test. Although a substantial proportion of minority group scores fell at or below the chance level, these appeared to retain fairly high levels of reliability.The authors wish to thank the Graduate Business Admissions Council, which supported this research.