A CONSTRUCT VALIDATION STUDY OF PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS FOR CHILDREN ENTERING PRE-KINDERGARTEN by MI-YOUNG WEBB (Under the Direction of Seock-Ho Kim) ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to determine the psychometric characteristics of phonological awareness assessment in pre-kindergarten children based on Messick’s (1989) framework for unitary construct validity. Four hundred and fifteen pre- kindergarten children were given eight tasks of phonological awareness drawn from “The Phonological Awareness Test” (Robertson & Salter, 1997). The four aspects of construct validity, including content, substantive, structural, and external aspects were examined. The item analysis indicated a high internal consistency; however, the levels of item difficulty for each task were fairly difficult for this age group. Factor analysis with varimax rotation revealed that two factors may underlie the phonological awareness measurement. Although the effect size was small, multiple regression analysis indicated a linear combination of two tasks had a statistically significant predictive validity for beginning alphabet sound knowledge in pre-kindergarten. INDEX WORDS: Validation, Messick’s unitary construct validity, Reading, Phonological awareness, Assessment A CONSTRUCT VALIDATION STUDY OF PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS FOR CHILDREN ENTERING PRE-KINDERGARTEN by MI-YOUNG WEBB B.S, The Cheongju University, South Korea, 1997 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2003 © 2003 Mi – young Webb All Rights Reserved A CONSTRUCT VALIDATION STUDY OF PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS FOR CHILDREN ENTERING PRE-KINDERGARTEN by MI – YOUNG WEBB Major Professor: Seock – Ho Kim Committee: Steve Olejnik Paula Schwanenflugel Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2003 iv TABLES OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................vi LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION............................................................................................1 Reading and Academic Performance........................................................1 The Component of Reading Acquisition..................................................1 Overview...................................................................................................2 II PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS .................................................................3 Definition of Phonological Awareness .....................................................3 The Role of Phonological Awareness in Reading Acquisition.................4 Developmental Sequence of Phonological Awareness.............................5 Validity Test for Phonological Awareness Tasks.....................................7 Purpose of the Study.................................................................................9 III VALIDITY.....................................................................................................10 Traditional Conception of Validity.........................................................10 Unified Conception of Validity..............................................................13 Validity as Integrated Evidence ..............................................................21 Facets of the Unitary Validity.................................................................22 IV METHOD .....................................................................................................24 v Participants..............................................................................................24 Materials .................................................................................................25 Procedure ................................................................................................31 V RESILTS .......................................................................................................35 The Content Aspect of Construct Validity..............................................35 The Substantive Aspect of Construct Validity........................................35 The Structural Aspect of Construct Validity..........................................37 The External Aspect of Construct Validity.............................................41 VI DISCUSSION...............................................................................................45 The Content Aspect of Construct Validity..............................................45 The Substantive Aspect of Construct Validity........................................48 The Structural Aspect of Construct Validity..........................................50 The Generalizability Aspect of Construct Validity................................55 The External Aspect of Construct Validity.............................................56 The Consequential Aspect of Construct Validity...................................59 VII CONCLUSION ............................................................................................61 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................63 APPENDIX: PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS TEST..................................................96 vi LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1: The Maximum Scores, the Means, and the Standard Deviations for Phonological Awareness Tasks Based on the Preliminary Item Condition...............................69 Table 2: The Maximum Scores, the Means, and the Standard Deviations fro Phonological Awareness Tasks Based on the Actual Item Condition.......................................70 Table 3: Coefficients Alpha and the Standard Error of Measurements for Phonological Awareness Tasks Based on the Preliminary Item Condition...............................71 Table 4: Coefficients Alpha and the Standard Error of Measurements for Phonological Awareness Tasks Based on the Actual Item Condition.......................................72 Table 5: The Mean Levels of Task Difficulty of Phonological Awareness ......................73 Table 6: Item Analyses for Rhyming Discrimination Task Based on the Preliminary Item Condition..............................................................................................................74 Table 7: Item Analyses for Rhyming Discrimination Task Based on the Actual Item Condition..............................................................................................................75 Table 8: Item Analyses for Syllable Segmentation Task Based on the Preliminary Item Condition..............................................................................................................76 Table 9: Item Analyses for Syllable Segmentation Task Based on the Actual Item Condition..............................................................................................................77 Table 10: Item Analyses for Initial Isolation Task Based on the Preliminary Item Condition............................................................................................................78 vii Table 11: Item Analyses for Initial Isolation Task Based on the Actual Item Condition............................................................................................................79 Table 12: Item Analyses for Phoneme Blending Task Based on the Preliminary Item Condition............................................................................................................80 Table 13: Item Analyses for Phoneme Blending Task Based on the Actual Item Condition............................................................................................................81 Table 14: Intercorrelations among the Phonological Awareness Tasks ............................82 Table 15: Factors, Eigenvalues, Percentage of Variance Accounted for...........................83 Table 16: Factor Loadings for One-Factor Solution..........................................................84 Table 17: Factor Loadings for Two-Factor Solution after Varimax Rotation...................85 Table 18: The Means and the Standard Deviations of Alphabet Sound Upper and Lower Case Knowledge Tests.......................................................................................86 Table 19: Predictive Correlations between Phonological Awareness Tasks and Alphabet Sound Upper and Lower Case Knowledge Tests ..............................................87 Table 20: The Means, and the Standard Deviations of Phonological Awareness Tasks by Gender Groups ...................................................................................................88 Table 21: The Means and the Standard Deviations of Phonological Awareness Tasks by Ethnicity Group..................................................................................................89 Table 22: The Means and the Standard Deviations of Phonological Awareness Tasks by Socioeconomic Group........................................................................................90 viii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Developmental Sequence of Phonological Awareness ......................................91 Figure 2: Facets of Unitary Validity..................................................................................92 Figure 3: Plot of Eigenvalues and Factors of Scree Test