A convenience sample (*n* = 551; 338 females, 212 males, and 1 unknown/other) of Americans was obtained via an internet data collection company’s survey sample frame and social media. We collected two subsamples, current K-12 teachers in the US (*n* = 200) and non-teachers (*n* = 351). All subjects were volunteers and received a compensation of $0-3.
We wrote statements about intelligence based on the following items:
1) Pre-existing surveys of intelligence (see citations)
2) Gottfredson's (1997a) mainstream statement on intelligence
3) Gottfredson’s (2009) taxonomy of common logical fallacies used to dismiss intelligence research
4) Correlations with various life outcome variables
5) Perceived influence on interventions to permanently raise IQ.
The survey included several sections on different aspects of intelligence, including
1) its existence as a construct,
2) important components,
3) biological and genetic influences,
4) education,
5) environmental interventions, and
6) group differences.
We wrote items in a simplified manner, intended for a general audience of non-experts, and most questions were evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale.
Some attention checks were added to the survey, and responses that did not pass every attention check were removed from analysis.
Because we had no pre-existing hypotheses prior to survey construction and data collection, we avoided conducting any specific statistical tests. Moreover, because there are numerous methods by which one may approach analyzing these data, we believed that using null hypothesis tests would encourage selective reporting and distort our interpretation of our data. Consequently, we did not conduct any statistical tests. Instead, we reported descriptive statistics for each measure. In order to provide comparisons of teacher and non-teacher subsamples, we included Cohen's *d* values. Lastly, in our discussion, we chose to consider values above 3.5 as an endorsement of the item, values below 2.5 as disagreement with item content. Those between 3.5 and 2.5 were considered to be of undecided or mixed opinion.
