Assessment of non-verbal intelligence in South African schools : do language and gender bias performance on the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices?

摘要

Test bias within the field of psychometrics is an issue of concern in the South Africanudcontext. Bias refers to whether a test measures what it claims to measure across differentudgroups. In South Africa, psychological testing has been associated with the oppressive anduddiscriminatory practices of the Apartheid era, leading to many tests being banned andudconsidered invalid and unfair (Foxcroft & Roodt, 2004). Research is required in South Africaudto investigate the effects and functions of psychometric tests in the context of the country’sudhistory and diverse population groups. This research investigated whether the Raven’sudStandard Progressive Matrices (SPM) is a good measure of non-verbal intelligence for highudschool children in the South African context, or whether it is biased by language and genderudamong Grade 8 and Grade 9 learners. The subjects were between 13 and 15 years old andudattended an English medium government high school in Johannesburg. The archival data wasudcollected over a two year period and the SPM was administered to some subjects in bothudGrade 8 and 9. A 2-way ANOVA tested for an overall difference on the SPM scoresudbetween learners who spoke English as a first language (EFL) and English as an additionaludlanguage (EAL), as well as the performance of Male and Female learners. There was audsignificant difference between the language groups in Grade 8 but not Grade 9. There wereudno significant gender differences. An item analysis tested for a language or gender differenceudon the item level. Certain test items showed a gender difference while others a languageuddifference, but no significant trend was found across the test. A matched paired t-test for theudgroup that received the test in both Grade 8 and 9 determined that there was a significantudincrease in scores with greatest gains for the Male and Female EAL learners.