The relationships among alternative measures of reading comprehension in learning disabled students

Abstract

Literature on reading comprehension assessment advocates a multiple-measures approach over a single-test methodology in view of the cognitive and linguistic complexity of the behavior being evaluated. Relationships among multiple measures have been observed, but no study has examined the nature of relationships among categories of comprehension assessment (product-process) or has conducted an explicit test of possible patterns of association, expressed as three models of comprehension assessment, in a sample of learning disabled subjects.

Therefore, the passage comprehension of 48 seventh and eighth grade males was assessed by questioning, retelling, cloze and miscue assessments followed by a correlational analysis of scores. Regression analysis examined which of the four assessments best predicted subjects' scores on a standardized test.

The data did not confirm any of the three hypothesized models of comprehension assessment but subjects' comprehension appeared to be partly a function of how it was measured. Performance on the miscue assessment best predicted standardized test performance.