A BRIEF MEASURE OF SELF-REPORTED COGNITIVE ABILITIES: ARE MALES AND FEMALES DIFFERENT?

Recent advances in cognitive abilities theory provided by the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model have made it essential to develop a new validated brief self-report measure of cognitive abilities. This paper outlines the development and initial validation of the Self-Report Cognitive Abilities Questionnaire (SRCAQ), a brief measure designed to assess cognitive functioning in the ability areas of fluid reasoning, short-term working memory, long term storage and retrieval, comprehension knowledge, processing speed, visual processing. Participants were 896 university students from Indonesia. The series of analyses using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the 6-factor structure of the SRCAQ. It had adequate factorial validity and demonstrated invariance across sex. This study also confirmed sex differences in self-reported cognitive abilities, with males tending to rate their fluid reasoning and visual processing higher than females. In the case of resources being limited, SRCAQ can be an alternative to estimate individuals' cognitive abilities. Limitations and suggestions for future research to expand the current study are presented.