National IQ estimates are based on psychometric measurements carried out in a variety of cultural contexts and are often obtained from Raven’s Progressive Matrices tests. In a series of studies, J. Philippe Rushton et al. have argued that these tests are not biased with respect to ethnicity or race. Critics claimed their methods were inappropriate and suggested differential item functioning (DIF) analysis as a more suitable alternative. In the present study, we conduct a DIF analysis on Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices Plus (SPM+) tests administered to convenience samples of Yakuts and ethnic Russians. The Yakuts scored lower than the Russians by 4.8 IQ points, a difference that can be attributed to the selectiveness of the Russian sample. Data from the Yakut (n = 518) and Russian (n = 956) samples were analyzed for DIF using logistic regression. Although items B9, B10, B11, B12, and C11 were identified as having uniform DIF, all of these DIF effects can be regarded as negligible (R2 <0.13). This is consistent with Rushton et al.’s arguments that the Raven’s Progressive Matrices tests are ethnically unbiased.

The purpose of the present study was to estimate the geographical distribution of the scores of intelligence and personality traits and their relations with some sociodemographic variables at a regional level of Russia. The analyses were based on responses from 193,361 Internet respondents from 83 provinces of the Russian Federation, who voluntarily completed two (cognitive and personality) screening tests. A number of statistically significant correlations of intelligence and personality traits with sociodemographic variables were established, some of which are consistent with the results of other authors, but some were new.

Data are reported for intelligence in 85 provinces and regions of the Russian Federation and compared with those obtained for educational attainment in a previous study of 79 provinces and regions. The two measures were correlated at .74. In both studies, the IQs of the provinces and regions were positively correlated with mean per capita income, net migration, urbanization, the percentage of ethnic Russians and latitude, such that intelligence was higher in the North, and significantly negatively correlated with infant mortality, fertility and longitude, such that intelligence was higher in the West.

Spatial autocorrelation is a measure of the degree in which objects, situated in a close proximity, have a tendency for similar values of a given index. Since recently psychology started to study spatial autocorrelation of national IQ (mean intelligence in a country). The article presents the results of the calculation of spatial autocorrelation of educational attainment (calculated from a mean score of the Unified National Exam of young people, who made it into a college for a budget education in 2014), as well as crime, birthrate, infant mortality, urbanization, net migration and personal income for 75 regions (subjects) of the Russian Federation. These results showed that, though all the mentioned indices are characterized by the spatial autocorrelation, its value varies. Low spatial autocorrelation has net migration, which is probably due to the fact that even a slight difference in life conditions between neighbor regions may promote intensive migration from the region with the worse conditions to the regions with better conditions, including the neighboring one. Low spatial autocorrelation of personal income can be explained by the fact that in the Russian Federation personal income in the region to a great extent is determined by oil and gas production, while mineral deposits are hardly characterized by the spatial autocorrelation on the level of such territorial units as subjects of the Russian Federation. Spatial autocorrelation of educational attainment is probably lessened by the fact that the scores were received by averaging the scores of the Unified National Exam for all specialties of all universities of the region without the consideration of possible differences of regions in prestige value of specialties and number of budget places in universities.

This study reports data for the intelligence of 15 year olds in 42 provinces and cities of the Russian Federation assessed in the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and their economic, social and geographical correlates. It was found that the average PISA scores of the provinces and cities were significantly correlated with the scores on the Unified State Examination in 2014 (r = .53, p<.001) reported by Grigoriev et al. (2016), with literacy rates in 1897 (r = .50, p<.01), with the percentage of ethnic Russians in the population, and with latitude and longitude showing that PISA scores were higher in the more northerly and westerly provinces.

The article ponders on two issues: on the existence of general aesthetic endowment and on the relationship between aesthetic endowment and intellectual abilities. An attempt is made to settle these issues via analysis of the data obtained in the approbation of the test for measuring aesthetic endowment in the domain of literary creativity, during which part of the participants was also administered the Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST) and/or intelligence test (Raven’s Matrices), as well as via analysis of the data of a special study in which, except for the test for measuring aesthetic endowment in literary creativity and Raven’s Matrices, three subtests of the Amthauer’s Intelligence Structure Test (Information, Analogies and Generalizations) were used. The results obtained were as follows. The tests for measuring aesthetic endowment in literary creativity and fine art do not correlate, and there is a divergence in their correlations with the test on general intelligence: while the test for measuring aesthetic endowment in literary creativity does not correlate with the Raven’s Matrices, there is a low but significant correlation between the VAST and Raven’s Matrices. Thus, the conducted analysis did not reveal evidence for existence of general aesthetic endowment. Aesthetic endowment in literary creativity does not correlate with general intelligence, which is proved by the absence of its correlation with both the Raven’s Matrices and the subtest Information, but it does correlate with verbal abilities: there is a low but significant correlation with the subtest Analogies, and a positive correlation with a latent variable formed from the subtests Analogies and Generalizations.

Data are reported for two studies of sex differences on the WAIS in Russia. In the first study a sample of 16 year old males obtained a 1.96 points higher Full Scale IQ than females and higher scores on the Arithmetic and Picture Completion subtests while females obtained a higher score than males on the Digit Symbol Search subtest. Males showed less variability than females on the Full Scale IQ. Sex differences for IQs and subtest scores are compared with those in the United States. In the second study a sample of 18 to 35 year old males obtained a higher Full Scale IQ than females by 3.44 IQ points. Key Words: IQ; Russia; sex differences; WAIS

Regional differences are presented for literacy adopted as a proxy for intelligence, infant mortality, fertility, stature and geographical location for 50 provinces in European Russia in the late nineteenth century. All variables were significantly inter-correlated. Intelligence was significantly higher in the north and west than in the south and east.

Data are reported for educational attainments as a measure of intelligence, a number of socio-economic variables, and latitude and longitude for 79 provinces of the Russian Federation. The average intelligence of the provinces was significantly positively correlated with urbanization (r=0.43), the percentage of ethnic Russians (r=0.39), net migration (r=0.54) and latitude (r=0.35), such that intelligence was higher in the north, and significantly negatively correlated with infant mortality (r=−0.43), fertility (r=−0.39) and longitude (r=−0.36), such that intelligence was higher in the west.

The article presents the results of approbation on the Russian sample of the general knowledge test developed in UK. The test estimates general knowledge of an individual in 18 domains: History of Science; Politics; Sport; History; Classical Music; Art; Literature; General Science; Geography; Cookery; Medicine; Games; Discovery and Exploration; Biology; Film; Fashion; Finance; Popular Music. The obtained data was compared with the UK data. The results show that the Russian participants have higher competence in most domains. Also, it was shown that differences in difficulty of questions in various domains are stable: there is a significant correlation between measures of difficulty of the test items for the 18 domains in the Russian and the British data. One possible explanation of this result relies on the hypothesis of differences in representations in the system of human knowledge. The obtained data have enabled us to exclude from the test too easy and too difficult (with kurtosis more than 30) items for the Russian participants. The version of the test after this exclusion is highly reliable (the Cronbach's alpha is 0.956). The test items, included in this version, were used for the comparison of the factor structures of general knowledge revealed in the British and the present studies. These factor structures were rather similar. This confirms that general knowledge as a cognitive ability can be partitioned into more narrow abilities.

Spearman's hypothesis tested at the level of items states that differences between groups on the items of an IQ test are a function of the g loadings of these items, such that there are small differences between groups on items with low g loadings and large differences between groups on items with high g loadings. Empirical tests showed in one case no support, in some cases modest support, and in other cases strong support. In this study groups of Kazakh, Korean, Tatar, and Uzbek children from Kazakhstan were compared with a group of Russian children from Kazakhstan yielding outcomes of Spearman's hypothesis ranging from r=.24 to r=.78 with a Nharmonic-weighted average correlation of .67. We conclude that Spearman's hypothesis tested at the item level appears to be a more regular phenomenon than previously thought.

Spearman's hypothesis tested at the level of items states that differences between groups on the items of an IQ test are a function of the g loadings of these items, such that there are small differences between groups on items with low g loadings and large differences between groups on items with high g loadings, and it has been confirmed in a limited number of studies. In this paper, we tested Spearman's hypothesis, comparing groups of Libyan university students and adults with comparable groups from South Africa, Spain, and Russia, and a group of Roma (Gypsies) from Serbia (total N=844). The analyses were carried out on comparisons between the Libyans and the other groups. Spearman's hypothesis was strongly confirmed with a mean weighted r with a value of .73. We conclude that Spearman's hypothesis tested at the item level appears to be a more regular phenomenon than previously thought.

Data are reported for intelligence measured by the Standard Progressive Matrices Plus of school students in Kazakhstan. Ethnic Kazakhs obtained a mean British IQ of 82.2, ethnic Russians obtained a mean British IQ of 103.2, and ethnic Uzbeks obtained a mean British IQ of 86.0. The IQ of Kazakhstan is estimated at 87.3. Factor analysis showed three factors identified as Gestalt Continuation, Verbal-Analytic Reasoning and Visuospatial Ability, replicating the analysis by Lynn, Allik, and Irwing (2004). The Russians performed significantly better than the Kazakhs in all age groups on Factor g and Factor 1 (Visuospatial Ability). There was no significant ethnic difference for Factor 2 (Gestalt Continuation) for ages 11, 12 and 13, although Russians performed significantly better than Kazakhs for age 10. The Russians scored significantly higher Factor 3 (Verbal-Analytical Reasoning) at ages 11, 12 and 13.

Normative data on the objective age of acquisition (AoA) for 286 Russian words are presented in this article. In addition, correlations between the objective AoA and subjective ratings, name agreement, picture name agreement, imageability, familiarity, word frequency, and word length are provided, as are correlations between the objective AoA and two measures of exemplar dominance (exemplar generation frequency and the number of times an exemplar was named first). The correlations between the aforementioned variables are generally consistent with the correlations reported in other normative studies. The objective AoA data are highly correlated with the subjective AoA ratings, whereas the correlations between the objective AoA and other psycholinguistic variables are moderate. The correlations between the objective AoA of Russian words and similar data for other languages are moderately high. The complete word norms may be downloaded from supplementary material.

Vocabulary IQs of British and Russian children are compared to samples of British children aged two to ten years. It is estimated that the Russian sample had a British IQ of 97.6.

Results are reported for gender differences in means and variability on the Standard Progressive Matrices for a sample of 132 15 year olds in Ukraine. There was no statistically significant difference in the mean but girls had lower variability than boys. The mean score was slightly lower than that of the same age group in Britain.

This paper reviews the studies of socioeconomic and ethnic and racial differences in intelligence carried out in Russia/USSR during the late 1920s and early 1930s. In these studies the IQs of social classes and of ethnic minorities were tested. These included Tatars (a Caucasoid people), Chuvash and Altai (mixed Caucasoid–Mongoloid peoples), Evenk (a mixed Caucasoid–Arctic people), and Uzbeks (a Central–South Asian people). The results of these studies showed socioeconomic differences of 12 IQ points between the children of white collar and blue collar workers, and that with the exception of the Tartars the ethnic minorities obtained lower IQs than European Russians.