Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices
Abbreviation: CPM
Background
The Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM) by John C. Raven are a variant of the Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) for the lower ability range. They are intended in particular for use with younger children up to about the age of 12 years and with adults of low cognitive performance. Raven1) developed them by extending the SPM series A and B by a series Ab that lies between A and B in difficulty.
The CPM are discussed in TDB2Online because they are occasionally administered to older adults, in particular also to those with incipient dementia. Via a transformation into SPM scores, scoring is possible in the TDB2Online app.
Test material
The CPM consist of the three series A, Ab and B, each of which contains 12 colored items. As with the SPM, the items consist of incomplete geometric figures or patterns that are to be completed from six response alternatives each (multiple choice). The test can be presented using a test booklet (with a carbonless answer sheet) or in the “board form,” which allows the response options to be inserted in the manner of a puzzle. Raven regarded both forms as equivalent, except for use with very young children and specific clinical groups.
The version of the original test that is currently up to date was published in 1998.2) After a change of publisher and a merger, it is currently produced and distributed in unchanged form by Pearson Assessment in San Antonio, TX. For the first time, it also included a parallel form of the standard form of the CPM.
In Germany, the CPM first appeared in 1978 in an adaptation by Schmidtke, Schaller and Becker.3) For this edition, norms were collected very systematically for children between 5 and 11 years of age. Within the complete edition of the Raven tests by Swets Test Service (later Harcourt Test Service, now Pearson Assessment & Information GmbH, all in Frankfurt/Main), the CPM appeared in 2002 in the adaptation by Bulheller and Häcker4) This is the currently up-to-date German version. It contains norms from 1998 and 1999 from France and Germany for children between just under 4 and just under 12 years of age.
This version is currently published by Pearson Assessment & Information in Frankfurt. It can be obtained directly from the publisher or via the test distributors in Germany or Switzerland. For administration of the CPM, one needs either one of the test booklets (standard or parallel form) and the corresponding answer sheet, or the puzzle form. At least a cursory familiarity with the content of the German CPM manual5) is necessary. In addition, the test authors recommend reading the basic manual on Raven's matrices tests6).
Test administration
The CPM can be used as an individual or group test. The test is a pure power test without a time limit.
Test raw scores
The test raw scores are determined analogously to the SPM. The maximum attainable score is 36.
Relationship between CPM and SPM
The CPM are intended for the lower cognitive ability range and therefore consist of the two easy series A and B of the SPM, supplemented by a series Ab of intermediate difficulty. All English test manuals for the Raven tests, and also the current German CPM manual7), contain a transformation table with which CPM raw scores can be converted into SPM raw scores. The SPM raw scores converted in this way can then be displayed in the TDB2Online profile. Figure 1 shows a graphical version of the conversion table, which at the same time assigns both raw scores to the performance of young adults.
Figure 1: Performance scores for SPM and CPM raw scores
This figure clearly shows that the CPM show reasonable differentiation ability only in a very low ability range.
Norms
In the German-speaking region there are only norming studies in children, none in (older) adults. Internationally, too, the data situation for adults is very meager. There are some smaller studies mentioned in the English CPM manual, but so briefly that an evaluation is hardly possible. More extensive is an Italian norming study in a random sample of 894 healthy adults aged 20 to 79 years8). For this study there are no percentile values as is otherwise customary, but age-related means and standard deviations. If one wants to know how the examinees in this study perform in comparison with the SPM norming studies, one can transform their means into SPM scores and then plot them in the diagram that shows the age courses of the SPM norms. Figure 2 shows these data.
Figure 2: Mean SPM raw scores across age for selected SPM studies and for the converted CPM raw scores of Measso et al., 19939).
It is striking that the examinees in the Italian study lie extremely far below the two Anglo-American studies and also still very far below the Belgian norms. In part they even lie below the results of the French workers (details on these samples are given in the documentation text on the SPM). One must take into account, however, that in the diagram means are plotted for the Italian study but medians otherwise. Very asymmetric distributions are to be expected especially with the CPM, because the ability to differentiate is truncated in the upper range. This will also have contributed to the lower means here.
Discussion
For most purposes of application in adults, it is better to use the SPM rather than the CPM. This point is treated in more detail in a section of the documentation text on the APM, which takes a position on the area of application of the three versions and shows data on it.