Linking the standard and advanced forms of the raven's progressive matrices in both the pencil-and-paper and computer-adaptive-testing formats

The concepts of adaptive testing, already used by Binet, and concepts of modern or latent trait theory, already extended from psychophysics by Thurstone, have been brought together by the advent of the computer, particularly the PC. With these developments, it is likely that to test specific abilities, special tests will be constructed for administration only by a computer and not in pencil and paper format. In the meantime, many existing paper-and-pencil tests, which usually are not administered adaptively, are being computerised. Among important tests in the educational and psychological literature, and therefore candidates for computerised administration, are the Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM). Before some inferences can be made across different modes of presentation, however, it is necessary that the degree of consistency of the responses across the two modes be evaluated in a variety of circumstances and by a variety of processes. This paper describes use of the Rasch latent trait model to help (i) implement computerised administration of the standard and advanced forms of the RPM, (ii) compare the relative item difficulties of the computerised form with those from a pencil-and-paper administration of the same items to a different group of persons, and (iii) to convert scores between the advanced and standard forms of the RPM using the two modes of testing, and to compare these scores with the results of a traditional method of equating reported in the literature.