The development and testing of an experience-based informal reading inventory

Hallett, Roberta D.(Roberta Dianne) (1979) The development and testing of an experience-based informal reading inventory. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop an informal reading inventory based on the experiences of Newfoundland school children and to test the ability of this instrument to accurately measure the instructional reading level of those students to whom it was administered. -- Passages for this Experience-based Reading Inventory (ERI) were selected from a collection of language experience stories written by children in Newfoundland and Labrador. All passages were subjected to an analysis of their readability by application of the Spache Readability Formula for materials at the primary levels and with the Harris-Jacobson Formula 2 for those thought to be at or above the grade four level of difficulty. -- The sample consisted of twenty-eight students randomly selected from the total grade four population of four schools under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic School Board for St. John's. The test battery for each child consisted of the experimental instrument, the Analytical Reading Inventory, the Metropolitan Achievement Test and the Slosson Oral Reading Test. All tests were administered within a three-week period. -- The ability of the ERI to accurately assess student instructional reading levels was tested by comparing silent reading scores obtained with those obtained on the ARI and MAT. Results were statistically analyzed by means of a t-test to test for significant differences between mean instructional level scores as measured by the informal reading inventories. Results were further analyzed by subjecting data to examination by means of a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient to test the strength of the relationship between the MAT, the ARI and ERI. -- At the .05 level of confidence, statistical analysis revealed that the difference between the mean instructional level scores of the ERI and the ARI was not significant. It was also found that there was a moderately high correlation between scores obtained on the ARI, the ERI and the MAT. This would appear to suggest that the three tests were measuring the same constructs. Final results appear to indicate that an experience-based reading inventory as constructed for this investigation is capable of accurately assessing student instructional reading level scores.

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