Specialized Intelligences: A Novel Questionnaire with Subscales for Measuring Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

Abstract

Howard Gardner’s theory argues that intelligence does not adequately encompass the large variety of abilities humans display, as it is traditionally defined. New findings about intelligence that change or expand over a lifetime indicate the need for new assessment methods. This study aimed to construct and validate a specialized intelligences questionnaire (SIQ).This was a descriptive and exploratory study. A sample of 304 participants (median age=23) was recruited through non-random and available sampling from Tehran, Iran. Extensive expert opinions were used to obtain the content validity of SIQ.The result of assessing content validity was confirmed (I-CVI = 0.857~1.000, S-CVI/UA = 0.819, and S-CVI/Ave = 0.970) and the concurrent validity with Gardner multiple intelligences questionnaire was 0.881. Two methods of Cronbach’s α coefficient and halving the test were used to calculate the reliability of the test. The results showed 0.929 for Cronbach’s α, which indicated adequate reliability for the questionnaire. Then the test was halved and Pearson’s correlation coefficient was 0.765 (p=0.000) which suggests good correlation for the questionnaire.Our findings indicate that SIQ possesses appropriate validity and reliability to measure the multiple intelligences. This is a valuable tool that can give insights to the future educational planning and decision making for education.