Development of a word reading test: Identifying students at-risk for reading problems

The aim of this study was twofold. In Study 1, we described the development of four forms of a test of word reading (TLP - Teste de Leitura de Palavras) for elementary school children (grades 1 to 4), using the Rasch model. An initial pool of 142 words was selected and tested on 905 Portuguese students. Rasch analyses allowed the development of a shorter version of the test for each grade with adjusted values concerning reliability coefficients and item local independence. In Study 2 (n = 325), the classification accuracy of the TLP to identify at-risk students for reading problems was examined based on several indices. Results indicated that each test form of the TLP presented overall satisfactory classification accuracy in identifying at-risk readers with a criterion of 0.80 to set the sensitivity levels.