Raven’s Standard and Advanced Progressive Matrices among Adults in South Africa

Due to the multicultural nature of the South African population and the fact that the country boasts 11 offi cial languages, Raven’s Standard (SPM) and Advanced (APM) Progressive Matrices are often used in organisational contexts as measures of cognitive ability. The emergence of the Employment Equity Act (55 of 1998) created a hesitance in the commercial sector with regard to the use of psychological assessments, as the Act clearly stipulates that psychometric assessments may not be used unless they have proven reliability and validity, are not biased against any employee, and can be fairly applied to any employee or group. The non-verbal nature of the SPM and APM lends them to the assumption of fairness, as language ability is excluded from the measurement of cognitive ability. However, questions have arisen as to whether these assessments measure the same construct in different groups, and whether the test is biased against individuals classed as previously disadvantaged through the apartheid system