Construct Validity of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices for African and Non‐African Engineering Students in South Africa

Abstract

We test the hypothesis that the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices has the same construct validity in African university students as it does in non-African students by examining data from 306 highly select 17-to 23-year olds in the Faculties of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of the Witwatersrand (177 Africans, 57 East Indians, 72 Whites; 54 women, 252 men). Analyses were made of the Matrices scores, an English Comprehension test, the Similarities subscale from the South African Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, end-of-year university grades, and high-school grade point average. Out of the 36 Matrices problems, the African students solved an average of 23; East Indian students, 26; and White students, 29 (po.001), placing them at the 60th, 71st, and 86th percentiles, respectively, and yielding IQ equivalents of 103, 108, and 118 on the 1993 US norms. The same pattern of group differences was found on the Comprehension Test, the Similarities subscale, university course grades, and high-school grade-point average. The items on the Matrices 'behaved' in the same way for the African students as they did for the non-African students, thereby indicating the test's internal validity. Item analyses, including a confirmatory factor analysis, showed that the African/non-African difference was most pronounced on the general factor of intelligence. Concurrent validity was demonstrated by correlating the Matrices with the other measures, both individually and in composite. For the African group, the mean r 5.28, po.05, and for the nonAfrican group, the mean r 5.27, po.05. Although the intercepts of the regression lines for the two groups were significantly different, their slopes were not. The results imply that scores on the Raven's Matrices are as valid for Africans as they are for non-Africans.

Males have greater g: Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17- to 18-year-olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test

“…Such procedures have proven very useful in establishing the convergent and divergent validities of mental ability subtests as well as their g loadings (Jackson, 1984;Jensen, 1998). They have also proven useful for determining the structure of intelligence in different ethnic groups (Jensen, 1998;Rushton & Jensen, 2005;Rushton, Skuy, & Bons, 2004).…”

Variation in Raven's Progressive Matrices scores across time and place

“…Moreover, the period in which the Raven has been used in various countries is long enough for enabling a study of the temporal patterning of scores. In the present paper, we report a meta-analysis of Raven performance of children and adults from 45 countries across a time span of 60 years.Cross-cultural comparisons with the Raven tests are often conducted from the premise that the instrument measures crosscultural differences in intelligence that are not confounded by other cultural or national differences, such as education and affluence (Raven, 2000;Rushton, Skuy, & Bons, 2004). 'Culture-free ' (Cattell, 1940), 'culture-fair ' (Cattell & Cattell, 1963), and 'culture-reduced ' (Jensen, 1980) are all terms that have been proposed to describe the Raven or similar tests that do not seem to require much cultural knowledge for answering the items correctly.…”

Uji Reliabilitas dan Validitas Eksternal The Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices

“…Penelitian mengenai reliabilitas dan validitas Raven Progressive Matrices setidaknya dilakukan di beberapa negara berikut: Islandia (Pind dkk., 2003), Afrika Selatan (Rushton, Skuy, & Bons, 2004), dan Italia (Balboni, Naglieri, & Cubelli, 2010) dalam dua dekade terakhir. Penelitian-penelitian tersebut menunjukkan bahwa Raven Progressive Matrices memiliki reliabilitas dengan rentang antara 0,69 -0,93 dan validitas dengan rentang koefisien antara 0,28 -0,64.…”