Raven's test performance of sub-Saharan Africans: Average performance, psychometric properties, and the Flynn Effect

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Black–White differences Cognitive abilities Cross-cultural comparison Measurement equivalence Measurement invariance This paper presents a systematic review of published data on the performance of sub-Saharan Africans on Raven's Progressive Matrices. The specific goals were to estimate the average level of performance, to study the Flynn Effect in African samples, and to examine the psychometric meaning of Raven's test scores as measures of general intelligence. Convergent validity of the Raven's tests is found to be relatively poor, although reliability and predictive validity are comparable to western samples. Factor analyses indicate that the Raven's tests are relatively weak indicators of general intelligence among Africans, and often measure additional factors, besides general intelligence. The degree to which Raven's scores of Africans reflect levels of general intelligence is unknown. Average IQ of Africans is approximately 80 when compared to US norms. Raven's scores among African adults have shown secular increases over the years. It is concluded that the Flynn Effect has yet to take hold in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2007, Nobel laureate James Watson sparked controversy by expressing his gloom about the future of Africa in the light of the finding that sub-Saharan Africans have lower average IQ test scores than the peoples in the other parts of the world (The Sunday Times, October, 14, 2007). Although some scientists responded that his statements were " unsupported by science " collated the results of more than 50 published studies in which western IQ tests were administered to Africans. They concluded that the average IQ of the populations of sub-Saharan Africa in terms of UK norms lies below 70 (Lynn, 2006; Rushton & Jensen, 2005). Malloy (2008) also reviewed the literature on this issue and arrived at a similar conclusion. According to Rushton and Jensen (2009), this low average IQ suggests that African adults have the cognitive ability of an average 11-year-old white teenager. This assertion strikes us as unlikely and so the work by Lynn and Vanhanen and others raises the following questions: (1) Is their estimate of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans accurate? (2) How should we interpret IQ test performance of Africans? (3) Is IQ test performance of Africans a cause for concern about the prospects of sub-Saharan Africa? The aim of the present paper is to address these questions by presenting a balanced and critical evaluation of the present body …