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- Title
Validity of caregiver-report measures of language skill for Wolof-learning infants and toddlers living in rural African villages.
- Authors
WEBER, Ann M.; MARCHMAN, Virginia A.; DIOP, Yatma; FERNALD, Anne
- Abstract
Valid indigenous language assessments are needed to further our understanding of how children learn language around the world. We assessed the psychometric properties and performance of two caregiver-report measures of Wolof language skill (language milestones achieved and vocabulary knowledge) for 500 children (ages 0;4 to 2;6) living in rural Senegal. Item response models (IRM) evaluated instrument- and item-level performance and differential function by gender. Both caregiver-report measures had good psychometric properties and displayed expected age and socioeconomic effects. Modest concurrent validity was found by comparing the caregiver-report scores to transcribed child language samples from a naturalistic play session. The caregiver-report method offers a valid alternative to more costly tools, such as direct behavioral assessments or language sampling, for measuring early language development in non-literate, rural African communities. Recommendations are made to further improve the performance of caregiver-report measures of child language skill in these settings.
- Subjects
SENEGAL; CAREGIVERS; CHILD development; COMMUNICATIVE competence; STATISTICAL correlation; INDIGENOUS peoples; LANGUAGE acquisition; PROBABILITY theory; PSYCHOMETRICS; QUESTIONNAIRES; RESEARCH funding; RURAL conditions; STATISTICS; VIDEO recording; DATA analysis; EFFECT sizes (Statistics); RESEARCH methodology evaluation; DATA analysis software; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; INTRACLASS correlation; DIFFERENTIAL item functioning (Research bias)
- Publication
Journal of Child Language, 2018, Vol 45, Issue 4, p939
- ISSN
0305-0009
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0305000917000605