[Developing a story retelling test for the assessment of language structure in Persian-speaking children]

ABSTRACT

Valid identification, prevention, and treatment of language disorders have a high priority for the clinicians. Story retelling is a method for studying language development which is faster than other procedures in implementing and analyzing, and has a reliable scoring system. The aim of this project is to construct story retelling test for assessing language structure in 6-7 year old, Persian children. An appropriate story for 6-7 year old children was written by the help of a speech pathologist, a linguist, and a novelist. The validity of the constructed story was checked by 14 experts. Then related pictures were design and their validity was examined. The test was conducted on 72 children [36 girls, 36 boys] of 6-7 years. The reliability was administered with a test-retest design with a two week interval. The reliability of the scoring system was evaluated with inter-rater method. Content validity index for this test was 89%, interclass correlation was 83%, and standard error of measurement was 2.76. The interclass correlation for scoring system was 93% and Pearson's correlation was 90%. Correlation of the test-retest scores was statistically significant [p<0.01]. This story retelling test has appropriate validity and reliability. It is suitable for quick assessment of language structure in 6-7 year old, Persian children