About the Measure
| Domains | Literacy |
| Subscales | Subtests for rhyme, alphabet knowledge, letter-sound awareness, letter sounds, spelling, concepts of print and word recognition |
| Target Construct | Literacy: Name writing, alphabet knowledge, beginning sound awareness and rhyme awareness, print and word awareness. |
| Description | Measures young children’s knowledge of fundamental aspects of phonological awareness and print knowledge, including: (a) name writing, (b) alphabet recognition and letter sounds, (c) beginning sound awareness, (d) print and word awareness, (e) rhyme awareness, and (f) knowledge of nursery rhymes. Designed to be administered to four-year-olds in the fall of PreK in order to guide instruction during the year. A second administration in the spring of PreK serves to evaluate progress. |
| Test Authors | Invernizzi, M., Sullivan, A., Meier, J. & Swank, L. |
| Publisher | Virginia Department of Education; University of Virginia (2004) |
| Psychometry | |
| Implementation |
Implementation details
| Respondent | Child |
| Prior knowledge Required | PALS PreK should be administered by classroom teachers. |
| Scoring | Clear and transparent scoring criteria. Detailed teacher manual, |
| Time | There is no time limit. For most children, the entire assessment can be completed in 20 to 25 minutes. Some children may perform better if PALS Prek is divided in several sessions. |
| Age | 4 years |
Psychometric details
| UK norms | NO |
| Norm / Criterion referenced | Criterion referenced |
| Standardisation sample | over 80,000 children varies by subtest |
| Reliability | Cronbach's alphas ranged .77 (Nursery rhymes awareness) to .93 (Beginning sound). Inter rater reliability was .99 for all measures except for print and word awareness (no info) |
| Criterion validity | Significant correlations between spring and fall scores |
| Construct validity | The PALS-PreK factor accounts for 34% to 76% of the total variance in the children’s scores across all tasks in both the phonological awareness and literacy screening components of PALS-PreK. |
| Concurrent validity | The correlation between the PALS-PreK tasks and the TALS Part A was medium-low but significant (r = .41), the correlation between the PALS-PreK Summed Score and the COR was medium–high and significant (r = .71), the correlation between the revised version of PALS-PreK and the TERA-3 was medium-high and significant (r = .67 |