Data on the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices from four Serbian samples
Data on the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices from four Serbian samples J. Philippe Rushton a, * , Jelena Cˇvorovic´ b a Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2 b Serbian Academy of Sciences, Belgrade, Serbia article info Article history: Received 9 September 2008 Received in revised form 18 November 2008 Accepted 21 November 2008 Available online 31 December 2008 Keywords: Serbs Progressive matrices IQ scores Cross-national comparisons abstract Previous studies have found the mean IQs for countries in the Balkans such as Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey range from 89 to 94. This is lower than the mean IQ of 100 for other European countries. To examine this issue further, we tested 608 17–65-year-olds (418 males; 190 females) from four different communities in the Republic of Serbia over a two-year period using the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices. Analyses showed that an average of 48 of the 60 matrices was solved (SD = 10), which is at the 31st percentile on the 1993 American standardization, equivalent to an IQ of 93. If an adjustment is made for the increase in American norms of two IQ points a decade from the 1993 standardization to the date of the study (2007 = 14 years), the Serbian IQ is reduced to 90. If a further reduction is made of two IQ points because the American IQ is 98 due to the inclusion of African Americans with a mean IQ of 85, the final best estimate of the Serbian IQ is 88. There were no significant differences between Muslims and Christians or males and females. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction As the trend toward a more global economy continues, national differences in cognitive performance are likely to become more salient. The IQs of 113 different countries from 620 studies (N= 813,778) have been tabulated and the world average IQ found to be 90 (Lynn, 2006; Lynn & Vanhanen, 2006 ). East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) obtained the…