Testing Language in the Presence of Dialect: Variation, Risk, and Clinical Validity

存在方言的情况下测试语言：变异、风险和临床有效性

• 批准号: 10460542
• 负责人: Lee Branum-Martin
• 金额: $ 18.83万
• 依托单位: GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-02 至 2024-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10460542
• 关键词: Address; African American; Assessment tool; Characteristics; Child; Clinical; Competence; Data; Data Analyses; Diagnosis; Diagnostic; Disease; Economics; Employment; English Language; Environment; Evaluation; Health; Impairment; Intervention; Investigation; Knowledge; Language; Language Development; Language Disorders; Language Tests; Learning; Linguistics; Mainstreaming; Masks; Measurement; Measures; Methods; Modeling; Modernization; Modification; Outcome; Performance; Poverty; Psychometrics; Publications; Reading; Recommendation; Recording of previous events; Research; Research Personnel; Risk; Sampling; Standardization; Structural Racism; Structure; Testing; Time; Underserved Population; Variant; base; career; clinical diagnosis; clinical practice; college; language disorder diagnosis; language impairment; response; service intervention; skills; social; standardize measure; success; theories

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Language learning is a key component of various lifelong economic and health outcomes (e.g, reading, employment, long-term college and career success). Strong, mainstream language skills are particularly important to performance on standardized language assessment. Children who speak nonmainstream dialects may be particularly challenged by the complexities created by dialect differences in language testing environments. There is a large body of work documenting these challenges for African American children. While modifications of existing language tests have been recommended and implemented for quite some time, these modifications usually involve either giving children credit for items influenced by dialect or skipping these items altogether. While such accommodations may avoid invalidly punitive test scores, such accommodations also may also impede clinical diagnosis and needed intervention services, thereby exacerbating an already serious health concern for AA children in potential need. Our overall objective is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of language and dialect in AA children from a rigorous measurement perspective. It is not clear that the measurement of language can be separated from the measurement of dialect, which is a variation on that language. Our central hypothesis is that items of existing language tests measure crucial features of language and that some items measure crucial features of dialect, but the relation between the factors of language and dialect remains unclear. Linguistically, we know many features of language impairment overlap with AA dialect. We therefore propose a secondary data analysis of a large sample of AA children (n = 890) who have been administered items of two standardized English language tests, and from whom were obtained naturalistic language samples. Accordingly, this project has three specific aims: 1. Evaluate the psychometrics of the DELV items for the extent to which they measure dialect-relevant features versus mainstream English features. We hypothesize that like prior investigations and our own pilot analyses, that the items will conform to multiple task-specific factors, indicating diverse aspects of language performance. 2. Evaluate the dialect-relevant item responses on a standardized measure of mainstream English, the Test of Language Development. We hypothesize that the items of the TOLD will show strong validity for measuring understanding of mainstream English and that dialect responses will show reasonable validity for measuring the linguistic rules represented by AA dialect. 3. Compare the developed factors of language proficiency and/or dialect from the DELV and the TOLD to naturalistic language measures. We hypothesize that measures of mainstream English proficiency will show high convergent validity and that measures of dialect may cluster in rule-specific subskills, useful to diagnose language disorder in dialect-speaking AA children.

项目概要/摘要 语言学习是各种终身经济和健康成果的关键组成部分（例如阅读、 就业、长期大学和职业成功）。强大的主流语言技能尤其重要 对于标准化语言评估的表现很重要。说非主流方言的孩子 语言测试中方言差异造成的复杂性可能尤其受到挑战 环境。有大量的工作记录了非裔美国儿童面临的这些挑战。 虽然对现有语言测试的修改已经被建议并实施了相当长一段时间， 这些修改通常包括对受方言影响的项目给予儿童学分或跳过这些项目 总共的项目。虽然这种调整可以避免无效的惩罚性测试分数，但这种调整 也可能妨碍临床诊断和所需的干预服务，从而加剧已经存在的问题 AA 儿童有潜在需要的严重健康问题。我们的总体目标是了解优势 从严格的测量角度来看，AA 儿童在语言和方言方面的弱点。它不是 明确语言的测量可以与方言的测量分开，这是一个 该语言的变体。我们的中心假设是现有语言测试的项目至关重要 语言的特征和一些项目衡量方言的关键特征，但它们之间的关系 语言和方言的因素仍不清楚。从语言学上来说，我们知道语言障碍的许多特征 与 AA 方言重叠。因此，我们建议对大量 AA 儿童样本进行二次数据分析 (n = 第890章 890 获得自然语言样本。因此，该项目有三个具体目标： 1. 评估 DELV 项目的心理测量，了解其测量方言相关性的程度 特色与主流英语特色。我们假设像之前的调查和我们自己的调查一样 试点分析表明，这些项目将符合多个特定任务因素，表明 语言表现。 2. 根据主流英语的标准化衡量标准评估方言相关项目的回答， 语言发展测试。我们假设 TOLD 的项目将显示出很强的有效性 衡量对主流英语的理解以及方言反应将显示出合理的有效性 用于测量以 AA 方言为代表的语言规则。 3.比较DELV和TOLD的语言能力和/或方言的发展因素 自然主义语言措施。我们假设主流英语水平的衡量标准将 显示出高度的收敛效度，并且方言的测量可能聚集在特定于规则的子技能中，有助于 诊断讲方言的 AA 儿童的语言障碍。