Temas em Psicologia
Print version ISSN 1413-389X
Abstract
PINHEIRO, Ângela Maria Vieira; VILHENA, Douglas de Araújo and SANTOS, Marcos Antônio da Cunha. PROLEC-T - text comprehension test: psychometric properties analysis. Temas psicol. [online]. 2017, vol.25, n.3, pp.1067-1080. ISSN 1413-389X. https://doi.org/10.9788/TP2017.3-08.
The Text Comprehension task (PROLEC-T) of the PROLEC Battery of Evaluation of Reading Processes, widely used in Brazil, has a limited sample and only descriptive analyses. PURPOSE: verify the internal structure (via the Item Response Theory) and external (concurrent) validity indices of the test. METHODS: study of 457 student's responses (49.7% boys), from 2nd to 5th year randomly selected in 77 classrooms in eight state schools, to the PROLEC-T and three reading tests. RESULTS: PROLEC-T has a low level of difficulty and low variability of scores, indicating unsatisfactory internal validity. It also shows limitations on the concurrent validity, since the correlations were weak between its scores and the school year, age of the child and his or her final grades in Portuguese, in spite of being moderate with reading measures. CONCLUSION: The test seems to be only suitable for an informal assessment of children with reading difficulties. However, if reformulated, it is suggested to replace the current texts for unpublished stories, increasing order of difficulty, and questions with only inferential questions.
Keywords : Reading evaluation; text comprehension; validity of instruments; item response theory.