Development & Validation of Urdu Receptive Language Scale (URLS)

Abstract

Objectives: To develop “Urdu Receptive Language Scale (URLS)” for Urdu speaking Pakistani children of age 0-6 years.
 Methods: This exploratory study was done at mainstream schools and day care centers on children with normal language development between the ages of 0-6 years from 1st March 2016 to 31st August 2016, by using convenient sampling technique. Firstly, the items for the questionnaire were constructed from four sources: literature review, experts, parents and direct observation of 384 Children of same age. Secondly the constructed test items were sent to the field experts (SLP’s) for the purpose of improvement. Thirdly, after incorporation of suggestions, the improved items were securitized by Urdu experts and finalized. In the next step, these items were tested for Relevance, Ambiguity, Clarity and Simplicity from field experts. The developed scale was then analyzed for reliability and validity by SPSS Version-18.
 Results: Study resulted in a 59 items Urdu Receptive Language Scale with each age range having different test items distribution. The mean of the relevance, clarity, simplicity, and ambiguity of test items was 3.89. The Item content validity index value was one for each of the 59 items. The content validity index for the entire scale was also one. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.948, which indicates a high level of internal consistency.
 Conclusion: The developed 59 Item Urdu Receptive Language Scale is reliable and valid tool for language assessment of Urdu speaking Pakistani children of 0-6 years age.
 doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.37.7.3928
 How to cite this:Butt GA, Mumtaz N, Saqulain G. Development & Validation of Urdu Receptive Language Scale (URLS). Pak J Med Sci. 2021;37(7):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.37.7.3928
 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Urdu Receptive Language Scale (URLS): Modification & development of protocol for administration in Urdu

“…Validity and reliability results for modified URLS showed high level of scale validity and internal consistency of test items compared to older version. 14 All designed instructions are mentioned in instruction manual along with description of recorded responses while applying the URLS on children. According to literature review and expert panel suggestions months were converted to year's format, sentence written expression for test items was changed from subjunctive mood to present participle tense and clinical terms were introduced for a few pure Urdu words used in the test statements.…”

“…According to literature review and expert panel suggestions months were converted to year's format, sentence written expression for test items was changed from subjunctive mood to present participle tense and clinical terms were introduced for a few pure Urdu words used in the test statements. Previous URLS 14 is modified in current study to maintain the evidence-based practice for Pakistani SLPs and to encourage them to use recent and best evidence available consistent with studies noted in a systematic review by Denman D et al 19 indicating that improvements were the need of the hour. Current study is significant since it has added modified assessment tool to fill the gap of such assessment tools in Urdu language.…”

“…These test items focused on listening, attention, understanding questions, command following, morphological patterns and deriving simple conclusions. 14 Other tests available in Urdu language including Pakistani tests like Test of Articulation and Phonology (TAPU), Action Picture Test (APIT), Aphasia Naming Test in Urdu, Urdu Speech Perception Test (USPT) and (U-PPVT-4) an Urdu version of Peabody picture vocabulary test but there is a lack of standardized measures for language assessments in Pakistan 15 with a huge population of children less than five years of age (14.80%). 16 This literature gap led the authors to work further to conduct pretesting of Urdu Receptive Language Scale (URLS) for modification & development of protocol for administration to make it applicable in the recent era and embarking further on norm referencing process.…”