The Reliability and Validity of an Assessment Tool for Developmental Dyslexia in Chinese Children

Abstract

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a common neurobehavioral disorder in children. It refers to the phenomenon in which children with normal intelligence lag significantly behind their peers in reading ability. In China, there is no unified standard for the assessment of dyslexia due to the use of simplified and traditional Chinese characters in different regions. This study was aimed at analyzing the reliability and validity of the self-developed Chinese dyslexia assessment tool named Chinese Reading Ability Test (CRAT), which was suitable for students of grade 3 to 5 in primary school. We randomly selected three primary schools in Shantou city of China, including two in the central district and one in the surrounding district. A total of 1492 students of grades 3 through 5 were recruited. We assessed the reliability of CRAT by test–retest reliability and internal consistency. The validity assessment was realized by discriminant validity, content validity and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). For reliability, the test–retest correlation coefficient of the total score of the CRAT was 0.671. The difference between the test–retest was not statistically significant. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the CRAT was 0.75. For validity, the correlation coefficient between the score of each subscale and the total score of the scale ranged from 0.29 to 0.73. The indexes of the three structural equation models all meet the standard (p > 0.05, χ2/df < 2.00, RMSEA < 0.05, GFI > 0.90, AGFI > 0.90, NFI > 0.90, CFI > 0.90 and IFI > 0.90). The fitting effects of the models were good. The CRAT has sufficient reliability and validity which could be used for the assessment and auxiliary diagnosis of Chinese Dyslexia in primary school students of grade 3 to 5.

The Prevalence of Dyslexia in Primary School Children and Their Chinese Literacy Assessment in Shantou, China

“…As further confirmation and assist, we conducted a literacy test, called the Chinese Reading Ability Test (CRAT), for the preliminarily diagnosed dyslexia children, with normally developing children from the same classes as controls. The CRAT includes five subscales on Chinese cognitive-linguistic measures of phonological awareness, morphological awareness, rapid automatized naming, orthographic awareness, and reading comprehension [ 23 ], which took about 45 min to complete for each student. There are three tests in the phonological awareness subscale: rhyme identification, onset identification, and tone identification, which are classical tests in the study of dyslexia in Chinese.…”

Self-Concept in Primary School Student with Dyslexia: The Relationship to Parental Rearing Styles

“…The CRAT, which has a good reliability and validity (Cronbach’s α = 0.75), was established for auxiliary diagnosis of Chinese dyslexia. It consists of five subscales, respectively the phonological awareness subscale (PA), morphological awareness subscale (MA), rapid automatized naming subscale (RAN), orthographic awareness subscale (OA), and reading ability subscale (RA) [ 28 ]. The PA consists of three subtests measuring onset, rhyme and tone, respectively.…”

“…The diagnostic criteria of the case group were consistent with our previous studies [7]. Briefly, we followed the including criteria as: (1) IQ above 80 by the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices; (2) at least 1 standard deviation below the average level of their actual grade on the Chinese Vocabulary Test and Assessment Scale, which is the widely used reading level test for screening Mandarin-speaking Chinese children for dyslexia (Cronbach's α = 0.75) [25]; (3) according to the reports from their head-teachers, Chinese language test had been below 10% among all children in the same grade for 6 months; (4) there were at least 2 standard deviations above the mean score in the Dyslexia Checklist for Chinese Children (DCCC), which has a good reliability for Chinese dyslexia identification (Cronbach's α = 0.97) [26]; (5) no suspected brain damage, uncorrected sensory impairment, other mental or neurological disorders or any comorbidities (e.g., attention deficit hyperreactivity disorder); (6) child psychiatrists make the final diagnosis according to the diagnostic criteria of the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), combined with the Chinses Reading Ability Test (CRAT), which is used for auxiliary diagnosis (Cronbach's α = 0.75) [27,28]. After a detailed introduction to our study, we invited these children and their parents to fill out questionnaires.…”

A Comparison Between Cognitive Assessment and Neurobiology Technology Assessment of Dyslexia: A Literature Review

“…The scale is composed of the phonological awareness subscale, the morphological awareness subscale, the rapid automatized naming subscale, the orthographic awareness subscale, the morphological awareness subscale, the rapid automatized naming subscale, the orthographic awareness subscale, and the reading ability subscale. The study examined both the reliability and validity of the CRAT and concluded that the CRAT has adequate reliability and validity (Huang et al, 2020).…”