Construction and Standardization of Reading Level Diagnostic Test for Third Grade Primary School Children

Early diagnosis of school children with dyslexia has an important role in the pre- vention of its harmful consequences. This research was carried out with the aim of construc-tion, standardization and the assessment of the validity and reliability of reading level diagnostic test for third grade primary school children in the city of Isfahan. Five hundred sixty nine third grade primary school children who were recruited using multi-stage random sampling method, were examined in this study. Reading level diagnostic test includes six subtests and assesses school children with regard to correct reading, comprehen-sion and phonological awareness. First, in a pilot study the questions included in the test were analyzed and corrected according to psychometric standards. Then, to assess the validity of the test, the correlation of test scores with the average grade and IQ, the correlation of the subtest scores with each other, the assessment of change in test scores along with the rise in the level of education, and the assessment of the difference in test scores between the dyslexic and the nor- mal group was used, and also test-retest reliability was assessed. The best subtests with regard to validity include oral reading, sentence completion and homogeneity, and the subtests comprehension 1 and comprehension 2 were the weakest in this regard. Also, in the assessment of the reliability of the subtests, oral reading subtest had the high- est, and comprehension 1 had the lowest reliability. Reading level diagnostic test is an appropriate tool for the assessment of reading skills in third grade primary school children.