Education Endowment Foundation: Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes

Assessment screening

Subscalesⓘ

Lexical-semantic processes, phonological recoding processes, read by either processes.

Publisher

GL Assessment

Test source

https://www.gl-assessment.co.uk/sellingline/DTWRP?productNodeId=2237

Guidelines available?ⓘ

Yes

Norm-referenced scores

Yes

Age rangeⓘ

6 – 12 years

Key Stage

Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3

UK standardisation sample

Yes

Publication date

2012

Re-norming date

N/​a

Eligibility

Validity measures available?

Yes

Reliability measures available?

Yes

note whether shortlisted, and reasons why not if relevant

Shortlisted

Administration format

Additional information about what the test measures

Regular and irregular word reading, pseudoword reading.

Are additional versions available?

No

Can subtests be administered in isolation?

Yes — stanine scores are available for individual subtests.

Administration Group Size

Individual

Administration duration

10 – 15 minutes

Description of materials needed to administer test

Reading cards, teacher’s guide and record form.

Any special testing conditions?

It states that the subtests should always be given in the same order.

Response format

Response mode

Oral

What device is required?

N/​a

Question format

Open ended

Progress through questions

Flat

Assessor requirements

Is any prior knowledge/training/profession accreditation required for administration?

No

Is administration scripted?

Some practice is needed for scoring the nonword reading task. However, no specific training is needed. The task could be administered and responses recorded for scoring offline for less experienced scorers.

Assessor requirements

Description of materials needed to score test

Teacher’s guide

Types and range of available scores

Raw, age standard scores (10 – 130), percentiles, reading age equivalents (5;00 – 12;00), stanines (1 – 9).

Score transformation for standard score

Age standardised

Age bands used for norming

2 months

Scoring procedures

Simple manual scoring — clerical skills required.

Automatised norming

None

Construct Validity

Rating Construct

Does it reflect the multidimensionality of the subject?

Specific literacy (nonword reading, regular word reading and exception word reading).

Construct validity comments (and reference for source)

Face validity is high as a measure of word reading that aligns to theories of reading development, and to curriculum content for early stages of reading (including the phonics screening check). The teacher’s guide (Forum for Research in Literacy and Language, 2012) reports excellent correlations with other instruments; DTWRP and SWRT r = .89. DTWRP and YARC accuracy r = .82. DWTRP and YARC EWR r = .87. Contrasted group validity is not measured.

Criterion Validity

Rating Criterion

Summarise available comparisons

None available to review.

Reliability

Rating Reliability

Summarise available comparisons

The teacher’s guide (Forum for Research in Literacy and Language, 2012) reports internal consistency within the standardisation sample (a good representative population of 4 to 12 year olds). Cronbach’s alpha is reported as .99 (excellent) for both form A and form B. Scores for subscales range from .97 to .98. Temporal stability and equivalence reliability are not reported.

Is the norm-derived population appropriate and free from bias?

Does the standardisation sample represent the target/general population well?

If any biases are noted in sampling, these will be indicated here.

Sample size is excellent, and was selected using multiphase probability sampling to ensure representativeness.

Sources

Sources

Forum for Research in Literacy and Language. (2012). Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes: Teacher’s Guide. London, UK: GL Assessment.