The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the Woodcock Word Comprehension Test and several measures of reading achievement and verbal intelligence. Subjects were 194 children who were tested in a University Reading Clinic. All were administered the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests, the Slosson Oral Reading Test, an Informal Reading Inventory, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, the Slosson Intelligence Test, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Pearson product-moment correlations (r) were used to test the relationships. It appeared that the Woodcock Word Comprehension Test assesses reading ability more than general verbal ability.The Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests (Woodcock, 1973a), a battery of five individually administered measures, are designed to assess students' reading placement and to diagnose reading skill strengths and weaknesses. The Woodcock has become an increasingly popular battery among school psychologists and reading educators. The following features seem to account, at least in part, for its popularity. First, it is relatively simple to administer. The test booklet can be manipulated easily, and the procedures for administration and scoring are straightforward. Second, it yields three Grade Level Scores (Easy Reading Level, Reading Grade Score, and Failure Reading Level) that are analogous to Betts' independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels (Woodcock, 1973b). These three scores indicate students' relative ability to deal with materials written at different levels. Third, there is a wide range of item difficulty, and norms are provided for K-12. Thus, this battery can be administered to students across a wide range of grade levels. Finally, the five tests included in the battery measure diverse reading skills: (1) Letter Identification, (2) Word Identification (sight vocabulary), (3) Word Attack (phonic skills), (4) Word Comprehension, and (5) Passage Comprehension.The merits and limitations of the Woodcock have been reviewed extensively (e.g., Laffey & Kelly, 1979). However, few research studies have been reported that crossvalidate the Woodcock as a measure of reading abilities. A study by Memory, Powell, and Callaway (1980) found correlations between the Woodcock Word Identification, Passage Comprehension, and Total Reading Grade scores to range from .86 to .09 with instructional level scores from an informal reading inventory (Betts, 1946) and with scores from the Diagnostic Reading Scales (Spache, 1963), using Betts' criteria. The Woodcock Word Identification Reading Grade Scores also were found to be highly correlated with grade equivalent scores from the Slosson Oral Reading Test (SORT; Slosson, 1963) and the Diagnostic Reading Scales' Word Recognition Test. No other studies have been located that seek concurrent validity between the Woodcock and other measures of reading ability. Requests for reprints should be sent to Byron Callaway, Reading
The Slosson Intelligence Test (SIT) is a short test easily administered and scored by classroom teachers or others comparably trained. It is administered individually and requires no reading on the part of the examinee. For these reasons the SIT is being used more and more widely by classroom teachers and reading specialists. These people frequently use the SIT in conjunction with reading achievement tests when comparisons are made to determine whether a child's reading performance is commensurate with his intellectual capacity. The present study was undertaken to investigate the validity of the SIT with a particular group of youngsters. A few validity studies already have been run on the SIT, but widely divergent populations were used.In the manual of the SIT Slosson (1963) reported validity studies made with the Stanford-Binet (S-B), Form L-M. All the correlations reported were in the .9Os. It should be noted that many items on the SIT were adapted from the S-B. DeLapa (1968) compared the SIT and S-B scores of two groups. Group 1 consisted of 57 elementary students in special education classes for the educable mentally retarded, and Group 2 consisted of 60 students in regular elementary school. The correlation between the SIT and S-B for Group 1 was .60; for Group 2 it was .90. Kaufman (1969) compared the SIT against the criterion, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), with 45 men and women who were in rehabilitation programs. He found coefficients of correlations with the SIT as follows: WAIS-Full Scale .93, WAIS-Verbal, .96 and WAIS-Performance .70.Houston and Otto (196s) compared the scores of poor readers on the SIT and the Ammons and Ammons Quick Test to scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). Their Ss were limited to those who had average or better intelligence as measured by the WISC. They found the SIT and WISC-Full Scale to be significantly related (r = .GO). An extensive study of variability could not be made because their Ss were selected on the basis of their average or better scores on the WISC.The present study was undertaken to examine specifically the validity of the SIT for use as a measure of intellectual functioning of children referred to a university reading clinic for diagnosis. Two questions were examined: (a) whether a statistically significant relationship exists between thc SIT and the WISC; and (b) whether any potential statistically significant relationship would remain stable over three levels of intelligence, above average (111 and above), average (90-110) and below average (S9 and below). SubjectsThe Ss were 51 students referred to the University of Georgia Reading Clinic for diagno'sis of their reading difficulties. They ranged in age from 6-8 to 14-7 and in grade placement from 1.6 to 8.2. The Ss were from all parts of Georgia and represented all economic and cultural levels. ProceduresThe WISCs were administered and scored by advanced graduate students in Educational Psychology enrolled in an internship program or by advanced graduate
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