Pearson - Clinical and Talent Assessment - Australia and New Zealand

Raven’s Progressive Matrices and Vocabulary Scales enjoy a long and famous history in the assessment of general cognitive abilities in children.

The Progressive Matrices usefully provide an assessment of non-verbal ability, an important feature for our ethnically diverse population, and the Vocabulary Scales provide scores in the verbal domain. Both levels of Progressive Matrices and Vocabulary scales can be used with children of various ability levels, with the SPM+ especially useful in the assessment of gifted children.

The new standardisation study 640 children aged between four and 11 years were administered the Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM) and the Crichton Vocabulary Scale (CVS) and 960 children aged between seven and 18 years received the Standard Progressive Matrices – Plus version (SPM-Plus) and Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale (MHV) (UK population).

The data was collected in groups for the SPM+ and MHV and comparison studies against individual administration were completed. Equating studies on other forms of the progressive matrices and vocabulary scales (e.g. SPM-Classic, CPM-parallel) were also carried out.

This standardisation represents the most significant development for the children’s version of the Raven’s progressive matrices and Vocabulary Scales since the 1979 & 1982 standardisations with children aged from five to 16 years.

Along with this standardisation, Pearson Assessment has completed an extensive redesign of the product, simplifying and updating materials. This makes the test more attractive and easier to use.

The following kits are available for children:

• Raven’s Educational CPM/CVS complete kit: Individually administered test for children aged 4 to 11 years

• Raven’s Educational SPM+/MHV complete kit: Individually and Group administered test for children and adolescents aged 7 to 18 years

NB There is an overlap in the normative data for the CPM/CVS kit and SPM+/MHV kit for children aged between 7 to 11 years. It is advised that the examiner uses their professional judgement as to which would be the most appropriate test for their use when they are seeing children within this age range. CPM/CVS is an individually administered test and has easier items than SPM+/MHV. The SPM+/MHV can be administered individually and in groups.