Preliminary Study for the Development of a Dyslexia Screening Test for Early Elementary Students in Korea: Reliability and Validity

Objectives: This study aimed to develop a screening test to efficiently identify first- and second- grade elementary school children with dyslexia and to examine its reliability and validity. Methods: The dyslexia screening test includes tasks for decoding, sentence reading fluency, spelling (word, sentence), and sentence repetition. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s α, while literacy education experts and elementary school teachers evaluated content validity. Concurrent validity was examined through Pearson correlation analysis with standardized reading assessments, and discriminant validity was assessed using independent t-tests. Results: The internal consistency of each subtest exceeded .70, and content validity was above .80. Except for the first-grade decoding task, all screening tasks showed significant correlations with standardized reading assessments, supporting concurrent validity. Additionally, the reading and writing tasks successfully distinguished children at risk for dyslexia from their typically developing peers, whereas the sentence repetition task, designed to assess language ability, showed no significant difference between the groups. Conclusion: Early screening is the most crucial intervention for children with dyslexia. This study developed a dyslexia screening test for use in clinical and educational settings, confirming its reliability and validity. Future research will collect semester-based data from various regions and examine the test items’ difficulty and discrimination indices.