Developing the KHANA Test to Evaluate Reading Skills in Persian-speaking Students: A Preliminary Study

Reading impairments are the most prevalent problem at school. It is vital to have a valid and reliable test to assess the student’s reading skills. This study aims to develop the KHANA test as a valid and reliable test to evaluate reading skills in Persian-speaking students and study the accuracy, rate, and reading comprehension in different grades and genders

This study included 87 students from second to seventh grade (75 typically developing students [TDS] and 12 students with reading impairments [SRI]). First, two preliminary parallel forms of student books, A and B, were prepared, both including 12 reading passages organized based on increasing difficulty as the student moved from one passage to the next. All the passages contain five comprehension questions. Then, the content and face validity, descriptive statistics, construct validity, and reliability, including test re-test, inter-rater, and the correlation between passages A and B were measured. 

Based on the results, all the passages and questions were valid. The passages can make significant differences in reading skills between different grades, while gender differences are limited. However, according to the test re-test analysis, the inter-rater reliability, and the correlation between the two passages, KHANA is a reliable tool and can discriminate SRI from TDS.

According to the results, KHANA seems a valid and reliable test to assess reading skills in Persian-speaking students from second to seventh grade.