A validation study of the Martin and Pratt nonword reading test

The Martin and Pratt Nonword Reading Test (‘Martin & Pratt’) is an Australian-normed assessment of nonword reading accuracy. The current study was conducted to examine whether this test still validly and accurately estimates the decoding skills of primary school-aged children, despite its norms having been collected in 1996. To address these questions, reading assessment data were collected from 176 Australian students (3 independent schools) from Years 1 through 6. Strong correlations between the Martin & Pratt and similar measures were observed, although the standard scores generated were consistently higher than other tests. This pattern of results indicated that the test is valid but overestimates nonword reading ability.