Interpretation and Use of Standardized Language Assessments for Diverse School-Age Individuals

Abstract

Purpose: The ultimate aim of an assessment is to help examiners make valid conclusions about an individual's skill given their performance on a particular measure. However, assessing the language abilities of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) individuals requires researchers and practitioners to carefully consider the appropriateness of traditional parameters of test psychometrics (e.g., reliability, or consistency of assessments as measurement) plus the intersectional identities that inform the generalizability of these parameters. The purpose of this clinical focus article is to provide clinicians and researchers with resources to interpret and use common standardized language assessments in English for CLD school-age youth. We present theories from psychometrics, legal studies, and education relevant to language assessment of diverse individuals, review standardized language assessments in English, and provide theory-to-practice applications of language assessment scenarios. Conclusions: Implementing intersectional approaches in working with diverse children and using assessment scores as just one piece of evidence amid a broader evidence base will contribute to a more accurate evaluation of CLD children's language abilities. A comprehensive approach involving multiple stakeholders across the field of communication sciences and disorders may support achieving such implementation.

Incorporating Dis/ability Studies and Critical Race Theory to combat systematic exclusion of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in clinical neuroscience

“…Researchers should be precise in their interpretation of research findings. Data from neuroscience experiments constitute just one piece of evidence; the scientific community should interpret and use that evidence in a fair and equitable manner, which may necessitate collecting further evidence to support the validity of study findings (Messick, 1989;Kane, 2012;Girolamo et al, 2022). In the case of BIPOC -and especially BIPOC from clinical populationsthis entails the following steps: Researchers should be equally precise in how they use study findings, whether from their or others' work, to make decisions about the state of the evidence base.…”

“…Researchers should be precise in their interpretation of research findings. Data from neuroscience experiments constitute just one piece of evidence; the scientific community should interpret and use that evidence in a fair and equitable manner, which may necessitate collecting further evidence to support the validity of study findings ( Messick, 1989 ; Kane, 2012 ; Girolamo et al, 2022 ). In the case of BIPOC – and especially BIPOC from clinical populations – this entails the following steps: (a) critically asking what demographic and identity variables are necessary to understand representativeness; (b) asking whether participants in a study are representative of the population of interest; (c) deciding under what conditions study findings are or are not generalizable.…”

Studies pertaining to language impairment in school-age autistic individuals underreport participant socio-demographics: A systematic review

“…In addition, given the many variants of a given language (e.g. there are at least 25 variants of American English alone; Wolfram & Ward, 2006), it is unclear to what extent age-referenced language test norming samples are representative of intersectional identities, such as autistic REM with LI, and socio-cultural variability (Girolamo, Ghali et al, 2022). Ideally, clinicians and scientists carefully interpret normative information for assessments and make decisions about the applicability of a given measure for their participants from an intersectional lens, knowing that perceived race and ethnicity may not correspond to language background.…”

“…Pivoting from this model involves first, underlining that the importance of access to services lies in promoting self-determination, an important predictor in positive outcomes of youth with disabilities (Shogren et al, 2015), and second, ensuring that epistemic knowledge is representative of the autistic population. Currently, about 92% of speech-language pathologists are likely to be monolingual English service providers using age-referenced assessments whose norming samples vary in their representation of autistic REM with LI (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2022; Girolamo, Ghali et al, 2022). This motivates a need to understand representation among school-aged participants in LI in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) studies, focusing on those which include age-referenced assessments in English.…”

Sentence production and sentence repetition in autistic adolescents and young adults: Linguistic sensitivity to finiteness-marking

“…In turn, sentence repetition and sentence production are useful for assessing morphosyntax in autism (Schaeffer et al, 2023). Evidence-based assessment also requires understanding how to interpret and use measures (Girolamo et al, 2022b; Messick, 1990). Yet, this knowledge may be inadequate.…”