Genetic Studies of Genius

After his service in developing the Army Alpha during World War I, Terman returned to Stanford in order to start his study.

[10] He hired several assistants, including Florence Goodenough and Catharine Cox, to search the public schools of California for similarly gifted children.

Therefore, the first volume of the study reported data on the children's family,[14] educational progress,[15] special abilities,[16] interests,[17] play,[18] and personality.

[20] Terman was a proponent of eugenics, although not as radical as many of his contemporary Social Darwinists, and believed that intelligence testing could be used as a positive tool to shape society.

[2] Based on data collected in 1921–22, Terman concluded that gifted children suffered no more health problems than normal for their age, save a little more myopia than average.

Data collected in the 1920s, also including a pioneering effort to implement above-level testing on a large scale, a practice that is widespread in gifted education today.

[22] The later follow-ups asked questions about war service, college education, marital status and happiness, work, retirement, raising children, and other lifetime events and concerns.

Among them were head I Love Lucy writer Jess Oppenheimer,[25] American Psychological Association president and educational psychologist Lee Cronbach,[26] Ancel Keys,[27] and Robert Sears himself.

By the 4th volume of Genetic Studies of Genius, Terman had noted that as adults, his subjects pursued common occupations "as humble as those of policeman, seaman, typist and filing clerk"[29] and concluded: At any rate, we have seen that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated.

[1]: 11 [31] Moreover, Terman meddled in his subjects' lives, giving them letters of recommendation for jobs and college and pulling strings at Stanford to help them get admitted.