What does an IQ of 100 mean?

The meaning of the IQ score can sometimes be confusing and difficult to understand. Often, you will find different explanations that do not really match up. So what you need is a team of expert psychologists that can give you an explanation based on science and do it in simple but precise terms. Here at BrainTesting, we are experts on IQ testing. Let's find out the meaning of the consulted IQ.

CONSULTED IQ

100

The IQ score is the level of intelligence that you have been assigned according to the score that you achieved in the intelligence test. Or the level of the person for which you are consulting that IQ score for that matter. The IQ is always the result of a comparison with the average test result that was achieved by the people who participated during the test construction (also called test sample), or in other words, the persons that were used during the IQ test trials to find out the average score of the test (also called mean).

On the basis that the average score of the test is always assigned a 100 IQ score, then if you were better than the average, so will your score be better than 100. The better you were in comparison, the higher the score. The worse, then the lower. Imagine that you do a 30-question test which has an average of 15 questions answered correctly, then obtaining 15 correct answers would secure you an IQ score of 100, while 16 correct answers would grant you an IQ over 100 and 14 under 100. The exact calculations can be a bit complex, but you can learn more here.

For any given IQ score, we can find out an IQ interval, which tells us the range within which the real score lies. We present to you the scored IQ interval for the consulted IQ.

IQ INTERVAL

112

Why is the interval important? Because IQ is a very specific number that you achieved this time. But, if you do several times the same test, or even different IQ tests, your results will vary a little bit. And that is normal, because there is always some degree of error to any measurement. That is why any testing tells you your IQ with a certain degree of confidence but also of potential error.

Factors such as sleep, mood, motivation, luck, and many other can slightly modify your performance from one day to another or from one test to another. These are variables that should be taken into account.
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Therefore the IQ Interval helps us to find the range within which your real exact IQ lies, with 95% confidence. Put in another way, you can be 95% sure that your exact IQ is between the two given scores.

You have to take into account that the interval that we proposed is computed according to our own IQ test. It can vary slightly between IQ tests since they depend on factors such as with how many people the test has been verified. Because if more people take the test, then we can compare with a more representative group and have less comparison error right? If that is the case, then the interval is smaller (as the degree of error expected is smaller too) and have lower and upper limits which will be closer to the scored IQ.

A great way to understand the IQ score and to compare is to visualize it in the Bell Curve. In the horizontal axis we set the scores, while on the vertical axis we find how many people receive that score. As you can see most people have middle scores. 50% of the people receive a score below 100 and 50% obtain a score above 100. You can check beneath where the consulted score (marked with the YOU) lies:

Less famous is another intelligence result of any IQ test called the percentile. All good IQ tests also tell you the percentile. And we think it is actually the most important score to explain. The percentile tells you which percentage of the population you beat with the given IQ score. In other words, which percentage of the population has a lower IQ than you. Remember that it also means that the remaining percentage has a higher IQ than you.

Since, as we said earlier, IQs are always a comparison, we consider the percentile the most interesting result of the test. For the consulted IQ, you can see the achieved percentile.

PERCENTILE

50%

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