Selection of Preschool Language Tests

Abstract

Clinicians are confronted with a wide range of norm-referenced tests designed to evaluate preschool language skills. This article approaches test selection from a data-based perspective. Twenty-one tests of language skills that included norms for children ages 4 and 5 years were reviewed for information on 10 psychometric criteria. Only 38% of these tests met half or more of the 10 psychometric criteria employed by McCauley and Swisher (1984a) in their review. Four tests that met a relatively high number of psychometric criteria (6 or more) were administered to 20 preschool children with specific language impairment and 20 age-matched controls. High interexaminer reliability was obtained for all tests. All tests had low correlations with a measure of nonverbal skills. Only one of the four tests provided acceptable accuracy in discriminating between the children with normal and the children with impaired language in our sample. Our empirical examination of four tests revealed that even tests that pass relatively high numbers of psychometric criteria may not be precise discriminators of normal and impaired language in 4- and 5-year-old children, indicating the need to complement psychometric review with data-based validation procedures.