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
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