Verbal Reports as Measures of Comprehension Evaluation

Abstract

The present study assessed several commonly used measures of children's comprehension evaluation ability. Third and sixth grade higher and lower ability readers (N= 120) read texts that either contained an inconsistency or did not. Following each passage reading, six measures of comprehension evaluation were obtained: one performance measure and five commonly used verbal report measures. The results revealed that different verbal report measures are not comparable measures of children's comprehension evaluation ability. The verbal report measures were differently affected by grade level, reading ability, and text variables. Moreover, the verbal report measures did not all relate equally to comprehension evaluation performance and relationships between verbal reports and performance were stronger for higher ability readers and young readers. The results suggest that caution is needed in interpreting studies using verbal report measures in isolation to assess children's evaluation skills, and that the use of poorly defined verbal report measures may be one factor contributing to inconsistent findings concerning the development of such skills.