DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF WORD RECOGNITION AND SPELLING TEST FOR THE PURPOSE OF DYSLEXIA ASSESSMENT: A PILOT STUDY

The first step in assessing dyslexia is to establish that problems exist in reading and spelling. The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a word reading and a word spelling test to determine their psychometric qualities of reliability and validity. Both test will be used in assessing dyslexia. The research methodology involves the development and the revision of the tests and the investigation of reliability and validity. Forty-six year one students were tested. The results revealed high reliability coefficients for the two tests, 0.980 for the reading test and 0.968 for the spelling test. Content validity was established through expert judgement. Both the tests were also found to be significantly correlated to the school-based Malay Language tests which were used as criteria indicating concurrent validity. The results imply that these two tests are reliable and valid to be used to establish reading problems among students with dyslexia because both these tests fulfill the psychometric criteria of reliability and validity.