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The Construction and Analysis of Short Scales of Language Proficiency: Classical Psychometric, Latent Trait, and Nonparametric Approaches
Author(s) -
CZIKO GARY A.,
LIN NIENHSUAN JENNIFER
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
tesol quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.737
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1545-7249
pISSN - 0039-8322
DOI - 10.2307/3586580
Subject(s) - trait , psychology , nonparametric statistics , item response theory , rating scale , cognitive psychology , psychometrics , linguistics , developmental psychology , econometrics , computer science , mathematics , philosophy , programming language
The study reported in this article used classical psychometric, latent trait, and nonparametric approaches to analyze 13‐ and 14‐item scales of English language proficiency. Tests of English listening comprehension (dictation) and reading (“copytest”) were constructed by modifying the standard dictation testing procedure to create items of text segments which varied considerably in both length and difficulty. Both the dictation and copytest were found to be homogeneous, cumulative scales of language proficiency with high reliability and validity. Log ability scores provided by Rasch analysis were found to correlate better with other measures of language proficiency than did the dictation and copytest raw scores. These findings indicate that the two language testing techniques investigated provide a useful, innovative approach to measuring general aspects of language proficiency. The theoretical and practical advantages of this approach over other language proficiency measurement techniques are discussed, as are implications for measuring other cognitive variables.