Raven's is not a pure measure of general intelligence: Implications for g factor theory and the brief measurement of g
By Gilles E. Gignac. 2015
109 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract It has been claimed that Raven's Progressive Matrices is a pure indicator of general intelligence (g). Such a claim implies three observations: (1) Raven's has a remarkably high association with g; (2) Raven's does not share variance with a group-level factor; and (3) Raven's is associated with virtually no test specificity. The existing factor analytic research relevant to Raven's and g is very mixed, likely because of the variety of factor analytic techniques employed, as well as the small sample sizes upon which the analyses have been performed. Consequently, the purpose of this investigation was to estimate the association between Raven's and g, Raven's and a theoretically congruent group-level factor, and Raven's test specificity within the context of a bifactor model. Across several large samples, it was observed that Raven's (1) shared approximately 50% of its variance with g; (2) shared approximately 10% of its variance with a fluid intelligence group-level factor orthogonal to g; and (3) was associated with approximately 25% test specific reliable variance. Overall, the results are interpreted to suggest that Raven's is not a particularly remarkable test with respect to g. Potential implications relevant to the commonly articulated central role of Raven's in g factor theory, as well as the Flynn effect, are discussed. Finally, researchers are discouraged to include only Raven's in an investigation, if a valid estimate of g is sought. Instead, as just one example, a four-subtest combination from the Wechsler scales with a g validity coefficient of .93 and 14 min administration time is suggested.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cd9c4709e9dcca22e1cab76e05fa23aee32e971d
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In Clinical Psychology
In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- Brain volume and intelligence: The moderating role of intelligence measurement quality (2017, background): “Notably, across several large, representative samples, Raven's has been found to be associated with g at .68 (Gignac, 2015).”
- The Neuroscience of Intelligence (2016, background): “Scores are reasonable estimates of the g-factor but they should not be mistaken as the g-factor (Gignac, 2015).”
- The Dunning-Kruger effect is (mostly) a statistical artefact: Valid approaches to testing the hypothesis with individual differences data (2020, methodology): “In fact, only about 5% of the general population rates themselves below average in intelligence, for example (Gignac & Zajenkowski, 2019). Furthermore, on average, people tend to self-report their IQ to be approximately 115 (Gold & Kuhn, 2017) or possibly higher (Gignac & Zajenkowski, 2019). Thus, w”