Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Free, valid IQ tests? Such a thing?

Mumofthree: you posted a link to newer norms on the Raven... I do not understand the age breakdowns. Can you enlighten me? Thanks!

Flower - Given the age ranges are given as .21/.71, for that to be a consistent amount of time for each column it's got to be .5 of a year per column and thus 9.21 is a decimal representation of age not years.months, so the actual age range represented by say 8.71/9.21 is 8yrs 8.5 months to 9yrs 2.5months.

Clear as mud?

My DD was a few days over 9yrs 2 months when she did the online Raven's test. So I followed the column marked 8.71-9.21 / 9. I think the next number, 7 for that column, is just a column label.

My son took the Ravens progressive matrix test through our nearby school district, given by a psychologist. They used a conversion factor which was published through the LA school district (I don't have the exact reference).
It does not look like the link that was listed above for the Ravens test, on the internet. I also looked at the test on Youtube that is in Spanish- I don't think the scoring is based on that.
The test is (I think) somewhat similar- the person/child looks at lots of squiggles and decides which one should come next. My 6 year old had to do 50 questions in 40 minutes or so. Kind of mind-numbing.
He got 177 (over the ceiling) on the non-verbal part of the RIAS test, and got a 99.1% on the Ravens test. I do not think the online tests you are looking at closely correlate with the "real" Ravens test.

Jack's mum, when researching some months ago, the various research articles I found on the ravens matrices which showed a few images of the questions did seems to be the same test. The children's version I found images of was also the same but with parts of question coloured, this is definitely not just a b&w copy of the children's one though as that is much shorter. There are a few different versions though I believe, so it is entirely possible that your son did a different one and the link provided is still legitimate. Or it might not be. The Internet is obviously not going to be a definitive source of iq testing.

After the test, I showed the online thing to my son who took it and he said it "sort of" looked like it. I doubt it's the exact same set of questions.
He took the Ravens Standard progressive matrix test. It did not use the online scoring system that you found.

Jack'sMom - I can't find the reference I previously found to there being multiple valid versions of the RPM, but wikipedia does confirm that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices

"In addition, "parallel" forms of the standard and coloured progressive matrices were published in 1998. This was to address the problem of the Raven's Matrices being too well-known in the general population. Items in the parallel tests have been constructed so that average solution rates to each question are identical for the classic and parallel versions. A revised version of the SPM - the Standard Progressive Matrices Plus - was published at the same time. This was based on the "parallel" version but, although the test was the same length, it had more difficult items in order to restore the discrimination that the original SPM had among more able adolescents and young adults when it was first published."

So as I said in my earlier post your son quite likely did do a different test but both may still be valid. From what I can make out the version on that site (and also this site: http://www.raventest.net/ - edited to add this version is not free, when you get to the end it will try to charge you to give a result, so don't bother unless you are willing to pay 9.50 euro) are the original/older version of the Raven's, using the same questions that make up 2/3s of the CPM test, of which there seems to be only one version.

There is no version of the Raven's with 50 questions, the standard version have 60 questions (and parallel and plus versions), the advanced has 48 questions. Maybe he did the advanced version?

The link to the newer norms are just that, newer norms. I am not sure how you can tell which version of the norms were used on your son unless they sent a norming sheet home? I have chosen to look at that chart because it's a harsher scoring than the one that is used on the spanish version of the test.

But ultimately it's a quick and free test that gives you a bit of an indication, it's not a full psychologist test.

You are right- he did 60 questions in 35 minutes. He did the standard version.

I didn't read this part (maybe before the edit?) and did it anyway. When you get to the end, it has the 'pay part' but if you scroll down it gives you your numbers. I guess the full psychological report would have a breakdown of some kind. I was a bit surprised at my results.

Oh now that is annoying, I failed to notice there were any results at all. I only scrolled down far enough to see the example of the results they would send you and then closed the window. I was interested to see what their 2010 norms were like... The standard matrices aren't going to differentiate that well at the top end anymore past childhood as they aren't hard enough.

GeoMama,

When I just ran through this, it gave me a sample score report at the bottom of the page, not for my scores, but for a 10 yr old male with an IQ of 160.

If you were surprised at your score, this might be why...