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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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2016

Jan Te NijenhuiS ,
Adel A. Batterjee ,
Michael Van Den Hoek ,
Jüri Allik  and
Vladimir Sukhanovskiy
Jan Te NijenhuiS*
Affiliation:
Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Adel A. Batterjee
Affiliation:
Waad Academy, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Michael Van Den Hoek
Affiliation:
Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Jüri Allik
Affiliation:
University of Tartu, Estonia
Vladimir Sukhanovskiy
Affiliation:
Parus Corporate, Moscow, Russia
*
1Corresponding author. Email: JanteNijenhuis@planet.nl
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Summary

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 49 , Issue 5 , September 2017 , pp. 634 - 647
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2016 

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