Preliminary Findings to Support the Internal Consistency and Factor Structure of the Ferrari-Lynch-Vogel Listening Test (FLVLT)

Assessing Critical Listening Skills in Accounting Community College Students: An Exploratory Inquiry of How Exercising Listening Skills Positively Impacts Students’ Test Performance

“…However, in a series of more recent studies on listening, a new definition of critical listening has emerged. Critical listening has been defined by Ferrari-Bridgers (2020), Ferrari-Bridgers, Stroumbakis, et al (2017 as "the listener's critical ability to (a) recognize patterns, (b) compare and contrast new information with prior knowledge while comprehending, (c) re-evaluate prior knowledge in light of new information, and (d) evaluate the content of a message (i) for adhering to specific patterns and structural requirements that constitute the message itself and (ii) for its completeness and accuracy, such as its lack of faults, illogicality, and omission of critical components" (Ferrari-Bridgers, 2020, p. 10). Ferrari-Bridgers (2020) tested the validity of the above definition by demonstrating through a preliminary factor analysis of over 900 data points collected using the Ferrari-Lynch-Vogel Listening Test (FLVLT) that integration and evaluation are two of the underlying constructs of the critical listening process, with evaluation of information accounting for 47% of variance, versus the 14% for the process of integration.…”

“…Critical listening has been defined by Ferrari-Bridgers (2020), Ferrari-Bridgers, Stroumbakis, et al (2017), and Ferrari-Bridgers, Vogel, and Lynch (2017) as “the listener’s critical ability to (a) recognize patterns, (b) compare and contrast new information with prior knowledge while comprehending, (c) re-evaluate prior knowledge in light of new information, and (d) evaluate the content of a message (i) for adhering to specific patterns and structural requirements that constitute the message itself and (ii) for its completeness and accuracy, such as its lack of faults, illogicality, and omission of critical components” (Ferrari-Bridgers, 2020, p. 10). Ferrari- Bridgers (2020) tested the validity of the above definition by demonstrating through a preliminary factor analysis of over 900 data points collected using the Ferrari-Lynch-Vogel Listening Test (FLVLT) that integration and evaluation are two of the underlying constructs of the critical listening process, with evaluation of information accounting for 47% of variance, versus the 14% for the process of integration. The FLVLT is one of the few critical listening assessment tools available on the market, and it has been developed to measure students’ critical listening skills in the classroom across several disciplines: speech (Ferrari-Bridgers, Vogel, & Lynch, 2017), math and computer sciences (Ferrari-Bridgers, Stroumbakis, et al, 2017), and emergency medicine (Armstrong & Ferrari-Bridgers, 2019).…”

“…Moreover, Ferrari-Bridgers (2020) observed that during the critical listening process, bridging and elaborative inferences are computed to achieve cohesiveness and congruency of a message. Cohesiveness is achieved in the integration process through the computation of bridging and elaborative inferences—parts (a), (b), and (c) of the definition.…”

“…Ferrari-Bridgers (2020) based such a claim through a comparison with inferential processes at reading comprehension level and derived its justification from the assumption that comprehension is linked to general cognitive skills that are common across the reading and listening modalities (see Gernsbacher et al, 1990). As McNamara and Magliano’s analysis (2009, p. 302) of several comprehension models states, most models assume that their theories generalize to the understanding of the information conveyed in both written and oral discourse.…”

“…Ferrari-Bridgers (2020) concluded that exercising critical listening skills in the classroom improves students’ inferential processes while comprehending and evaluating the congruency and accuracy of a message. Consequently, while taking a test, students can more easily disambiguate the content of the test items and find the right answers.…”