Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices: New school age norms and a study of the test's validity

The present paper reports norms for Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) for Icelandic children of school age, 6-16 years. A total of 665 children were tested, the sample having been chosen to reflect the school age population in different parts of the country. The standardisation sample consisted of 550 children out of those tested. Norms for this group are comparable to recent norms from other countries, though showing somewhat higher scores than current norms from the UK. In the upper grades a ceiling effect becomes quite noticeable. This paper also reports a study of the SPM's validity. In Iceland, children in grades four, seven and ten are required to take national exams in Icelandic and Mathematics; additionally children from the tenth grade also take national exams in two foreign languages, English and Danish. This makes it possible to examine the criterion-related validity of the Matrices with respect to scholastic achievement. Results show that the matrices show the highest correlation with mathematics with lower correlations being found for the language subjects as expected. These correlations range from 0.38 to 0.75. While the SPM shows impressive correlations with the national examinations, testifying to the usefulness of the test as a measure of intelligence, the ceiling effect seen for the norms indicate that the test is appropriately used only with children in the first seven grades.