Latent Structure of Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices

The main goal of the study was to determine the constructive validity of Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices by means of item factor analysis. The most important topic within this objective is to determine the test dimensionality, since many authors report on finding several significant primary factors. The study included 2334 children aged 4 to 11. Several types of factor analysis were used in order to obviate the influence of technique on the results. Our data suggested 3 or 4 first order factors. Based on the usual McDonald definition, the primary factors obtained could be considered difficulty factors in the majority of cases. The necessary number of factors on age subsamples, extracted by parallel analysis, was between 3 and 5. Factor structure on age subsamples indicated the youngest ages, 4 and 5, to be essentially different from the older ones. This difference was identified as underdevelopment of the goal management mechanisms

Latent Structure of Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices

The main goal of the study was to determine the constructive validity of Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices by means of item factor analysis. The most important topic within this objective is to determine the test dimensionality, since many authors report on finding several significant primary factors. The study included 2334 children aged 4 to 11. Several types of factor analysis were used in order to obviate the influence of technique on the results. Our data suggested 3 or 4 first order factors. Based on the usual McDonald definition, the primary factors obtained could be considered difficulty factors in the majority of cases. The necessary number of factors on age subsamples, extracted by parallel analysis, was between 3 and 5. Factor structure on age subsamples indicated the youngest ages, 4 and 5, to be essentially different from the older ones. This difference was identified as underdevelopment of the goal management mechanisms

Is it possible to eliminate guessing on entrance examinations?

The purpose of this paper is psychometric and psychological analysis of guessing on entrance examinations, and especially evaluation of classical procedure for reducing guessing which has been used at Department of psychology in Novi Sad, which consisted of instruction against guessing and correction with Abbott formula. As first, we have tried to estimate guessing in several ways, according to classical test theory and item response theory. Besides of analysis of association between different indicators of guessing, we have performed a special form of criterion analysis, by correlating possible indicators of guessing with several personality traits. Basic conclusion of this paper is that guessing is not consistent behavior and because of this it is very hard to measure and eliminate it. The next conclusion is that the applied classical procedure has not been able to eliminate guessing, and that it probably disfavored several candidates

Aberrant behavior of preschool children: Evaluation of questionnaire

In the study metric characteristics of children aberrant behavior questionnaire were analyzed. The analysis was performed on the sample of 1.165 children, aged 4-7, in preschool institutions in several towns of Vojvodina. The questionnaire contained 36 items of the Likert-type scale and was filled in by one parent of each child. The authors examined main metric characteristics of the complete questionnaire, as well as individual items under the Rasche’s measurement model. Generally, parents seldom notice aberrant behavior in their children. Most frequently they notice stubbornness, while very rarely torturing of animals. The item discrimination, on the whole, was found satisfying. The reliability of the questionnaire is 0.84., and all indicators of misfit are within satisfactory ranges. According to differential functioning of the items, the authors found gender and age specificities of parents’ evaluation of aberrant behavior of their children. Parents often notice stubbornness and moldiness in girls, and aggression in boys. According to the parent’s observations, younger children are characterized by nail nibbling, ticklishness, and fearfulness, whereas older children show a tendency to force their way by crying, waywardness and bed-wetting. By means of factor analysis of the items, three principal facets of aberrant behavior were determined: overindulgence, shyness and quarrelsomeness. Cross validation (hold out) showed that these three facets were robust in relation to the selection of the sample

Raven's colored progressive matrices (CPM) - basic metric characteristics and norms

Principal measuring characteristics and norms of Raven’s colored matrices were determined on the sample of 2.334 children from Vojvodina at the age of 3.5 and 11. The basic metric characteristics were determined according to classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT). By testing a dimensionality it was showed that the test had one main object of measuring. The norms were also evaluated in terms of their precision in statistical and psychometric sense. It was found that there was no statistically significant difference in solving the test requirements between boys and girls at any age, nor was there any significant interaction of gender and age. Reliability of the test at the age group of 6 - 11 was over 0.85, at the age of 5 it was 0.75, whereas at the youngest age it was only 0.59. The complete test was too easy at older ages due to the Flynn’s effect. It is owing to this reason that a conclusion can be drawn that there’s a big question mark over its application at the age of 11,and even 10. It is recommended that standard Raven’s matrices should be used at that age.