Draw-a-Man and Raven's Progressive Matrices (1938) intelligence test performance of reserve Indian children.

Abstract

Eighty-six Canadian reserve Indian children, from 7 to 15 years of age, were tested on the Harris-Goodenough Draw-a-Man and Raven's Progressive Matrices (1938) tests. The Draw-a-Man mean IQS were: girls 100, boys 113; a significant difference. The Raven mean IQS were: girls 79, boys 85; not significantly different. The tests were significantly correlated (raw scores, r = 0.67; IQS, r = 0.53). Older children had significantly lower IQS on the Raven only. These results caution against assuming that these tests, especially the Raven (1938), are "culture free" measures of intelligence.Certain intelligence tests, including the Draw-a-Man (DAM) and Raven's Progressive Matrices (Raven), are generally regarded as being less affected by cultural factors than others (Anastasi, 1961). This study examines the performance of reserve Cree Indian children on the DAM (Harris, 1963) and Raven (1938) (Raven, 1960) with a view to examining cross-cultural effects. Also investigated were the effects of sex and age. While Harris (1963) found that girls had slightly higher scores on the DAM than boys, both he and Dennis (1942) reported that in a number of American Indian samples, boys did as well as or better than girls. Sex differences in Raven performance have not been studied in an Indian population. Carney and Trowbridge (1962) found an increase in DAM IQ with age in Fox Indian children but no change in non-verbal IQ. Notcutt (1949) found older Zulu children further below the English Raven (1938) norms than younger children. METHOD SubjectsThe sample (54 girls, 32 boys) included all testable children in the age range of 7-15 years who were attending school during the tester's (E.B.W.) visit to two Cree reservations in northern Saskatchewan. The combined mean age was 11.08, SD 2.28: girls' mean 11.28, SD 2.54; boys* mean 10.75, SD 1.77 years. The boys' mean was not signicantly lower than the girls' but the variances were different (F = 2.06, df 53/31, p< 0.05).

Inter-rater and Intra-Rater Reliability Test with Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test

“…The descriptive analysis showed that GHDT average IQ score for girls is higher than for boys, from both raters. This is in line with the results obtained by the previous research where GHDT average IQ score for girls is higher than boys [8,27,28]. It is also said that most Human Figure Drawing researchers such as Goodenough, Koppitz, Harris, and Machover found that the drawings of girls in the primary grades are superior to those of boys [29].…”

Measuring intelligence with the Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test.

“…For the Man scale, 33 boy-girl raw score comparisons with tests of significance were reported in nine studies of noninstitutionalized American children (Coyle, Glance, & Joesting, 1977;Harris & Finder, 1974;Harris et al, 1970;Henderson, Fay, Lindemann, & Clarkson, 1973;Laosa, Swartz, & Holtzman, 1973;McCormick & Schnobrick, 1971;O'Keefe, Leskosky, O'Brien, Yater, & Barclay, 1971;Olivier & Barclay, 1967;Wiltshire & Gray, 1969). No significant differences in the drawing ability of the sexes were reported in 24 of the 33 comparisons across ages 3 to 18.…”

Comparison of intellectual performance of Chicano and Anglo third-grade boys on the Raven's coloured progressive matrices

“…Only one study was found that warned against the use of the Raven's test. Wiltshire and Gray (1969) reported that Canadian Cree Indians scored considerably lower than the Raven's norms. The authors concluded that the performance of the Cree could not be directly evaluated from the test's published norms.…”