SPEARMAN'S HYPOTHESIS TESTED COMPARING SAUDI ARABIAN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS WITH VARIOUS OTHER GROUPS OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS ON THE ITEMS OF THE STANDARD PROGRESSIVE MATRICES.
Spearman's hypothesis tested at the level of items states that differences between ethnic groups on the items of an IQ test are a function of the g loadings of these items, such that there are small differences between ethnic groups on items with low g loadings and large differences between ethnic groups on items with high g loadings; this has been confirmed in a limited number of studies. In this paper, Spearman's hypothesis was tested, comparing a group of Saudi children and adolescents (N=3209) with other groups of children and adolescents from Denmark, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia, South Africa, Estonia, Ukraine, Ireland, Russia and Chile (total N=9333). The analyses were carried out on twelve comparisons between the Saudi Arabian children and the other children. Spearman's hypothesis was confirmed less strongly than in other large-scale studies with a mean weighted r value of 0.44. The relevance of these findings for the discussion on the causes of group differences is discussed.
*Work and Organizational Psychology,University of Amsterdam,the Netherlands.
Jan
J
Te NijenhuiS
†Waad Academy,Jeddah,Saudi Arabia.
Adel A
AA
Batterjee
*Work and Organizational Psychology,University of Amsterdam,the Netherlands.
Michael
M
Van Den Hoek
‡University of Tartu,Estonia.
Jüri
J
Allik
§Parus Corporate,Moscow,Russia.
Vladimir
V
Sukhanovskiy
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D012529:Saudi Arabia; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric