Latent structure of Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices.

The main goal of the study was to determine the constructive validity of Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices by means of item factor analysis. The most important topic within this objective is to determine the test dimensionality, since many authors report on finding several significant primary factors. The study included 2334 children aged 4 to 11. Several types of factor analysis were used in order to obviate the influence of technique on the results. Our data suggested 3 or 4 first order factors. Based on the usual McDonald definition, the primary factors obtained could be considered difficulty factors in the majority of cases. The necessary number of factors on age subsamples, extracted by parallel analysis, was between 3 and 5. Factor structure on age subsamples indicated the youngest ages, 4 and 5, to be essentially different from the older ones. This difference was identified as underdevelopment of the goal management mechanisms.