There are two main methods of assessment—testing knowledge and evaluating intelligence—and they both have distinctive applications and settings.

Testing Intelligence:

Goal: Intelligence tests are designed to assess cognitive talents, including the capacity for reasoning, problem-solving, memory, and linguistic and mathematical aptitude. Usually, these assessments offer a broad picture of a person's intellectual capacity.

Appropriateness: To determine giftedness, evaluate cognitive strengths and weaknesses, determine educational placement, and guide intervention techniques for people with learning difficulties or developmental disorders, intelligence tests are frequently utilized in educational settings.

Inappropriateness: Since intelligence tests may not fully represent the range of human skills and can be impacted by cultural influences, they should not be used in isolation to make critical judgments about people, such as cultural bias.

Examining one's knowledge: The goal of knowledge tests is to evaluate a person's proficiency in a given domain or subject area with regard to particular information or skills. These assessments usually assess how well a person has learned and remembered procedural or factual knowledge.

Appropriateness: To assess student learning, guide lesson preparation, and gauge academic progress, knowledge exams are frequently employed in educational contexts. In order to verify proficiency in particular professions, they are often utilized in professional certification tests.

Inappropriacy: Knowledge assessments might not fairly represent a person's capacity to use their knowledge to solve new challenges or apply it in practical settings. They might also work against students who struggle with test-taking techniques or who come from educational backgrounds with little resources.

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) is one example of an intelligence test. The WAIS is a popular intelligence exam used to evaluate adults' cognitive capacities between the ages of 16 and 90. It is composed of multiple subtests measuring verbal comprehension, working memory, perceptual reasoning, and processing speed, among other facets of intelligence. The Full-Scale IQ score and scores for different index scales are obtained by combining the results of these subtests.

Advantages: The WAIS offers a thorough evaluation of several cognitive functions, enabling a nuanced comprehension of a person's advantages and disadvantages. It can be used by people in a variety of demographic categories because it has been standardized on a sizable and diverse population.

Because of its strong validity and reliability, the WAIS consistently yields reliable results and measures the things it is supposed to.

Drawbacks: The WAIS, like all IQ tests, is subject to cultural bias, which could disadvantage people from non-mainstream cultural backgrounds. It may fall short of capturing the complexity of human intellect because it mainly concentrates on cognitive skills that are testable through standardized procedures. The WAIS can be costly and time-consuming to administer since it must be scored and administered by qualified specialists.