Limitations of Preschool Instruments and Standards for Minimal Levels of Technical Adequacy

Abstract

Serious evaluation of preschool instruments has been limited in part by the lack of standard technical adequacy criteria. This article suggests minimal levels of technical adequacy for subtest and total test internal consistency, stability, floors, subtest item gradients, and validity. Ten commonly used preschool instruments (5 used for placement purposes and 5 used for general skills testing) were evaluated according to the proposed criteria, and suggestions were made that concerned the use of the instruments. The principal recommendation made is that practitioners carefully select instruments for preschool assessment according to the instruments' technical adequacy.

Effects of Maternal Employment and Prematurity on Child Outcomes in Single Parent Families

“…Construct validity is supported through correlations with various IQ scales in previous research. For preschoolers, test-retest reliability is reported to range from .76 to .79 and internal consistency, from .73 to .84 (Bracken, 1987). Interrater reliability, assessed monthly in the current study, ranged from 95-100% (M = 99.0%).…”

“…Extensive testing supports the construct validity of the measure (Merz, 1984). Internal consistency reliabilities are reported to range from .77 to .82 for the subscales and from .86 to .89 for the total test; testretest reliabilities range from .83 to .88 (Bracken, 1987). Interrater reliability (percent agreement), assessed monthly in the current study, ranged from 83-100% (M = 95.8%).…”

The Bayley-III-NL Special Needs Addition: A Suitable Developmental Assessment Instrument For Young Children With Special Needs

“…The results form an overview of widely used instruments for the developmental assessment of young children and their characteristics in relation to their use with children with special needs. This article represents an update of earlier reviews of infant developmental assessment instruments (Bracken, 1987;Bradley-Johnson, 2001;Flanagan & Alfonso, 1995). However, although these reviews focused on the psychometric characteristics of the instruments, the focus in this article will be on the applicability of the instruments for children with special needs.…”

“…The test floor is an index score of 40. Bliss (2007) concludes that the item gradients are acceptable, but writes that a raw score increase of 1 point results in no more than a 2-point increase in scaled scores, which implies that the item gradients do not meet the criteria as set by Bracken (1987). The manual indicates that the instrument is suitable for children with autism, developmental delays, motor delays, speech and language delays, and for premature children.…”

“…An item gradient refers to "the steepness with which standard scores change from one raw score unit to another" (Rathvon, 2004, p. 49). Bracken (1987) suggests the minimal requirement of no fewer than three raw score items per standard score standard deviation. Flanagan and Alfonso (1995) use this criterion and report that the majority of preschool intelligence tests do not have adequate item gradients across all levels.…”