About the Measure
| Domains | Language |
| Subscales | Total score, auditory comprehension expressive communication |
| Target Construct | Oral language: Pre-verbal, interaction-based skills to emerging language and early literacy |
| Description | A comprehensive developmental language assessment, with items that range from pre-verbal, interaction-based skills to emerging language and early literacy. |
| Test Authors | Zimmerman, I. L., Pond, R. E. & Steiner, V. G. |
| Publisher | Pearson (2014) |
| Psychometry | |
| Implementation |
Implementation details
| Respondent | Caregiver up to 2:11, then child. |
| Prior knowledge Required | Trained professionals such as speech or occupational therapists, mental health professionals and health practitioners with appropriate Graduate and professional qualifications in their field of practice. |
| Scoring | Scoring clear and transparent but need to be careful about establishing basal scores |
| Time | 25-35 minutes for children aged birth through 11 months to 45-60 minutes for children over one year. |
| Age | Birth to 7 years and 11 months |
Psychometric details
| UK norms | YES (US for children under 2 years and 6 months) |
| Norm / Criterion referenced | Norm referenced |
| Standardisation sample | 800 |
| Reliability | With the exception of age group 6:0-6:5 years, the values for Cronbach’s alphas are generally very good and are excellent (> .90) for the Total Language standard scores. |
| Criterion validity | Insufficient data in the public domain to evaluate |
| Construct validity | Validity demonstrated by providing various types of evidence to support a test's interpretation and uses. These are not different types of validity; they are simply different types of evidence that, in totality, provide an evaluation of validity (AERA, APA, NCME, % ARA, 1999). More on validity reported at PLS-4 |
| Concurrent validity | Concurrent validity with PLS-4 is .80 for the Auditory Comprehension and Expressive Communication scales and .85 for Total Language. Correlation ranged .70 to .82 with CELF |