Eyferth study

Eyferth's study was first published under the title Eine Untersuchung der Neger-Mischlingskinder in Westdeutschland in the journal Vita Humana in 1959. Eyferth described further results in the paper Leistungen verschiedener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern in Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligenztest für Kinder (HAWIK), which was published in the journal Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie in 1961.

Study design

The children studied had been raised by their unmarried German mothers. Most of the fathers, white or black, had been members of the US occupation forces stationed in Germany. At the time of the study, the children were aged between 5 and 13 (mean age: 10). The mothers of the children were approximately matched for socio-economic status; they were mostly of low socioeconomic status. There were about 98 mixed race (black-white), and about 83 white children in the sample. The total sample consisted of about 5 percent of the German children known to have been fathered by black soldiers between 1945 and 1953, in addition to a matched sample of 83 German children whose fathers were white soldiers. Of the fathers of the mixed-race children, about 20 percent were French Africans and the remaining approximately 80 percent were African Americans.

For assessing IQ, a German version of the WISC intelligence test (Hamburg Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, HAWIK) was used.