Satisfaction With Standardized Language Testing

Abstract

There is little documentation regarding which standardized tests of language development clinicians prefer and their degree of satisfaction with tests and the testing process. This study reports the results of a survey of 216 clinicians in a variety of work settings across the state of Oregon. Clinicians rated their degree of satisfaction with several factors associated with testing: time available for test administration and interpretation; funding available for purchasing tests; and psychometric properties of tests. The findings indicated that approximately one-half of the respondents expressed neutrality regarding overall satisfaction, with the remaining clinicians almost evenly split between expressing some degree of dissatisfaction or satisfaction. School clinicians were significantly less satisfied than clinicians in clinic/hospital settings. Clinicians with caseloads greater than 40 expressed significantly greater dissatisfaction with tests and the testing environment. Clinicians also indicated the tests most commonly used with four age groups that covered the birth-to-19 years age range. Possible sources of clinician dissatisfaction are also explored.

Standardized Versus Naturalized: An Evaluation of Child Morphological and Syntactic Assessments

“…As found in the present study and supported by Huang et al (1997), evaluation is a time-consuming aspect of a SLPs workload. Language sampling took triple the time than standardized testing when analyzing morphology and syntax.…”

“…Furthermore, the participants did not always produce certain morphosyntactic categories during the language sample that were tested during administration of the CELF-P 2. These findings, as well as previous research (Huang, et al, 1997), suggest that although participants may not produce certain forms during standardized testing, they may still have the linguistic knowledge of the forms.…”

“…Assessments account for a great amount of a speech-language pathologist's (SLP) professional time and help justify decisions of treatment for clients. As noted by Huang, Hopkins, and Nippold (1997), SLPs spend "21% of their work time in evaluation, indicating that evaluation is a major professional activity" (p.12).…”

“…Limitations of standardized assessments include the potentially restricted comparison group, time constraints, and financial burdens. A comparison group represents an ideal population which may not be linguistically comparable in gender, culture, or socioeconomic status (Huang et al, 1997;McFadden, 1996).…”

“…While opinions of standardized testing vary, many researchers have concluded that naturalized assessments and standardized assessments alone are not an adequate representation of child language development (Huang et al, 1997;Southwood & Russell, 2004;Tyler & Tolbert, 2002).…”