A Review of the Psychometric Properties of Retell Instruments

Abstract

This narrative synthesis reviews the psychometric properties of commercially and publicly available retell instruments used to assess the reading comprehension of students in grades K–12. Eleven instruments met selection criteria and were systematically coded for data related to the administration procedures, scoring procedures, and technical adequacy of the retell component. High variability was evident in the prompting conditions and the use of quantitative and qualitative scoring mechanisms. Because no two instruments shared the same features, their retell scores are likely not equitable. None of the measures provided sufficient information to substantiate their reliability and validity. Many were lacking data on critical psychometric aspects, such as passage equivalency and construct validity, and nearly all had insufficient or ill-defined norming samples.

Notes

Note. ^aThe type of reading identified is specific to the retell component of the assessment.

^aInformation not specific to retell but to measure in general. Retell subtest was not disaggregated in the data.

^bVIP reportedly was developed by the same researchers as DIBELS and is equivalent to DIBELS-6 (Good & Kaminski, 2002a). The technical manual for the VIP is published under Peyton and McPherson (2010).

^aInformation not specific to retell but to measure in general. Retell subtest was not disaggregated in the data.

^bVIP reportedly was developed by the same researchers as DIBELS and is equivalent to DIBELS-6 (Good & Kaminski, 2002). The technical manual for the VIP is published under Peyton & McPherson (2010).