Supporting educational researchers and practitioners in their work in education: Assessing the verbal reasoning skills of five- to six-year-old children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to design an instrument for five- to six-year-old children to help measure their verbal reasoning skills and assess the validity and reliability of the resulting instrument. For this purpose, the researchers have created the Younger Children Verbal Reasoning Test (YCVR-test) and a control instrument, which have been used experimentally with 24 five- to six-year-old children from kindergarten. The instrument has then been evaluated using the Pearson correlation coefficient and Cronbach's alpha measure for internal consistency. Additionally has been evaluated the Cronbach's alpha with 129 five- to six-year-old children. The findings of this study indicate that the YCVR-test is an internally consistent and reliable tool for use in assessing the reasoning skills of young children.

Keywords:

• assessment
• reliability
• validity
• verbal reasoning
• young children

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the European Social Fund [1.2.0401.09-0070].