Construction and Psychometric Properties of Sentence Repetition Test (SRT) for Latvian Primary School Children

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine psychometric properties of newly developed Sentence Repetition Test (SRT). The test evaluates ability to recall orally presented sentences in Latvian language, and it was constructed specifically for junior primary school children. The sample consisted of 136 first and second graders aged 7 to 9 years (52% girls). Final version of Sentence Repetition Test is composed of 12 items in increasing level of difficulty. Spearman-Brown split-half reliability coefficient of the test is sufficiently high to recognize SRT as reliable. Convergent and concurrent validities of the test were determined in smaller sub-sample of 64 children, using measurements of Digit Span sub-test from Latvian edition of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV (Wechsler, 2003) and Phoneme Segmentation Fluency from Latvian edition of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS Next) (Good & Kaminski et al., 2011; Rascevska et al., 2013a). Sentence Repetition Test has medium strong statistically significant correlations with both tests. The study affirms sufficient reliability and validity of the new test.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n4p104