Gender, Age, Grade and Socio-Economic Status Differences On Raven Colored Progressive Matrices

This study was designed to determine the effect of gender, age, grade and social class on the intellectual ability of children aged 6 to 8 years. 102 students of first, second, and third grades with equal number of boys and girls were taken from different schools of Islamabad. The subjects were divided into three socio-economic status (SES) groups i.e., upper, middle, and lower on the basis of monthly family income. The Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM) was used as a measure of intellectual ability. The reliability estimate of RCPM was .81 for the present sample. t-test showed that there was no significant difference between the performance of girls and boys on RCPM. One way analysis of variance indicated that grade and SES had a significant effect, whereas the effect of age on the performance on RCPM was not significant. Children of grade 3 obtained higher RCPM scores than children of grade 1 and 2. RCPM scores of children belonging to the upper SES were higher than that of the middle and the SES.