History of the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test

The name Otis-Lennon reflects co-authors Arthur Sinton Otis, Ph.D., and Roger Thomas Lennon, Ph.D.

Otis (28 July 1886-1 January 1964) is best known for the multiple choice intelligence tests he developed for the U.S. Army. As a doctoral student under Lewis Terman in 1917 he developed the group-administered tests titled the Army Alpha (for literates) and the Army Beta (for illiterates). Otis developed it to improve cost and time efficiency as compared to one developed by Alfred Binet (1857–1911), which was individually administered. Given in multiple-choice format and administered in groups, 1.7 million World War I recruits took the Army Alpha test. The results were published in 1921 and included the relative performance of recruits of different national origins.

Many historians credit Fredrick James Kelly, Ph.D.,(1880–1959) of the University of Kansas, for inventing the multiple choice format (also known as Multiple Choice Questions or MCQ) in 1914. However, Otis was the first to use it on a large scale in the Army Alpha test.

Otis was also a major contributor as a test editor for the World Book Company, which later became part of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. World Book Company is not related to World Book, Inc., the Chicago-based publisher of encyclopedias. The OLSAT was first published by Harcourt in 1979.

Lennon (1916–1985) was an executive and head of the testing division of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich as well as a chairman of one of its subsidiaries, The Psychological Corporation. Later he became a senior vice president of the publishing house. He retired in 1981 as associate to the chairman.