Cultural Literacy: A Concurrent Validation

Abstract

E. D. Hirsch's (1987) book Cultural Literacy has raised much interest and controversy over the construct of cultural literacy. It is the purpose of this investigation to evaluate the reliability and the validity of the Cultural Literacy Test. The test was administered to 150 college students. A split-half reliability coefficient of .93 was obtained. The test scores yielded a correlation of .59 with the Verbal SAT and .31 with grades in freshman English. No statistically significant correlation was obtained between scores and GPA. The Cultural Literacy Test did differentiate between the ability levels of freshman English. It was concluded that the reliability and validity of the construct and test of cultural literacy is supported.