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

Abstract

SummarySpearman’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 thegloadings of these items, such that there are small differences between ethnic groups on items with lowgloadings and large differences between ethnic groups on items with highgloadings; 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 (totalN=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 weightedrvalue of 0.44. The relevance of these findings for the discussion on the causes of group differences is discussed.