title: Screening of phonological awareness in the early elementary grades: an IRT approach.
abstract: The purpose of the present study was to explore the possibilities for the assessment of growth in phonological awareness of children in kindergarten and first grade. Phonological awareness was measured using four sets of items involving rhyming, phoneme identification, phoneme blending, and phoneme segmentation. The results of an exploratory factor analysis and analyses conducted within the framework of item response theory showed one latent ability to underlie the different sets of items, which nevertheless differed in difficulty. Analyses in terms of the children's ability further showed the phonological awareness measures to be sensitive to growth. The amount of information supplied by the different sets of items depended on the children's level of ability. The conclusion that it is possible to accurately monitor the development of children's phonological awareness in the early elementary grades appears to be justified, and this possibility opens up new perspectives for the early screening for reading problems and dyslexia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Special Education, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. J.Vloedgraven@pwo.ru.nl
authors.forename: Judith M T
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Vloedgraven
authors.forename: Ludo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Verhoeven
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D009426:Netherlands; D010700:Phonetics; D011932:Reading; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity