The Development of a Word Reading Test (KOBIT) in Turkish

Reading achievement tests suitable for the linguistic and phonological characteristics of the Turkish language are not available in the literature (Bingöl, 2003). Therefore, identification of students with reading difficulties exerts great challenges for the Turkish educational system as well as for the clinical field. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to the field by developing reading tests based on grammar and phonological structure of Turkish. The test that was developed within this study was administered to more than 300 elementary school students (grades 1-5) in Istanbul. The results based on 283 students data indicated that Cronbach’s alphas for the subtests, correlations between the parallel forms and between two administrations of the tests were above .85. In addition, the correlations among the subtests as well as the correlations of the subtests with the total test scores and with Word Reading Speed were found to be above .75. Findings provide sufficient evidence for the reliability and validity of the KOBIT as a reading efficiency test. Based on these results, it was concluded that KOBIT can be used as a tool to assess reading problems among children aged 6-11.