This pattern was replicated in each of the five
measures of general knowledge we employed,
including a homemade instrument we called the
Practical Knowledge Test. This task was
designed to address the criticism that our other
measures of general knowledge were too academic—
that they tapped knowledge that was
too esoteric or elitist and that was not useful in
daily life. We didn’t think this was true; many
items on these measures were mundane and
concrete questions such as “In what part of the
body does the infection called pneumonia
occur?” Nevertheless, in the Practical
Knowledge Test, we made an effort to devise
questions that were directly relevant to daily living
in a technological society in the late twentieth
century; for example, What does the carburetor
in an automobile do? If a substance is carcinogenic,
it means that it is? After the Federal
Reserve Board raises the prime lending rate, the
interest that you will be asked to pay on a car
loan will generally increase/decrease/ stay the
same? What vitamin is highly concentrated in
citrus fruits? When a stock exchange is in a “bear
market,” what is happening? and so forth.