Linguistically Balanced Tool for Reading Skills Assessment in Russian-Speaking Adults

Reading impairments substantially reduce quality of life, that is why it is necessary to detect them timely, provide intervention programs, or provide special learning or working environment for people with reading impairments in case the intervention was not effective. The diagnostics of reading impairments and evaluation of intervention efficiency is impossible without reliable and valid assessment tools. Whereas Russian-language tools for reading skills assessment in children are being developed and standardized systematically, there still was a lack of tools for reading skills assessment in Russian-speaking adults. We conducted a study aiming to construct the linguistically balanced tool for reading skills assessment in adults. We developed a test including two parallel versions of texts with no significant differences in several psycholinguistics parameters. Each text is accompanied with a set of questions that allows to asses both reading skills and written text comprehension skills. The test passes an approbation in a group of 111 Russian-speaking young adults. During the approbation, two versions were proved to be parallel: no significant differences were revealed neither in reading speed nor in number of correct answers to the comprehension questions. Since it was impossible to evaluate the external validity of an instrument due to the absence of another standardized reading test for adults, the comparison with the widely used standardized reading test for children was made, using the most difficult variant of that test. The paper provides the description of a new test, the results of comparison of parallel versions, the results of external validity evaluation, and the computed cur-off levels for diagnosing reading impairments in Russian-speaking young-adults.