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.

项目摘要/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特别是 对标准化语言评估的表现很重要。说非上方方言的孩子 语言测试中的方言差异所产生的复杂性可能特别挑战 环境。有大量的工作记录了针对非裔美国儿童的这些挑战。 尽管已经推荐并实施了现有语言测试的修改，但 这些修改通常涉及给孩子信誉受方言影响或跳过这些物品的信用 项目完全。尽管这种住宿可能避免无效的惩罚性考试成绩，但此类住宿 还可能阻碍临床诊断和需要的干预服务，从而加剧 对潜在需求的AA儿童的严重健康关注。我们的总体目标是了解优势 从严格的测量角度来看，AA儿童中语言和方言的弱点。它不是 很明显，语言的衡量可以与方言的测量分开，这是 该语言的变化。我们的中心假设是现有语言测试的项目衡量了至关重要的 语言的特征和某些项目衡量方言的关键特征，但是 语言和方言因素尚不清楚。语言上，我们知道语言障碍的许多特征 与AA方言重叠。因此，我们提出了大量AA儿童样本的二级数据分析（n = 890）已经管理了两个标准化英语测试的项目， 获得了自然主义的语言样本。因此，该项目具有三个具体的目标： 1。评估DELV项目的心理计量学，以衡量与方言相关的程度 功能与主流英语功能。我们假设这与先前的调查和我们自己一样 试点分析，这些项目将符合多个特定于任务的因素，表明 语言表现。 2。根据主流英语的标准措施评估与方言相关的项目响应， 语言发展测试。我们假设所述项目将显示出很强的有效性 衡量对主流英语的理解，该方言响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的语言水平和/或方言的开发因素 进行自然主义的措施。我们假设主流英语能力的措施将 显示高收敛有效性和方言度量可能会集中在规则特定的亚技能中，对 诊断语言语言障碍在语言儿童中。