Understanding Assessment: The Importance of Understanding the Confidence Interval
The confidence interval is a range of values surrounding the score obtained from the administration of a standardized test.
Understanding Assessment: Understanding the Hologram
A hologram is a description of a child within an evaluation that illustrates the child’s strengths and weaknesses for the reader and should include examples that show the child’s ability to learn and highest level of functioning, as well as a description of when his or her skills break down.
Report Writing: Guide
It is extremely important that the evaluator include all the necessary information in their evaluation. This is a template of all the necessary sections in an evaluation.
Understanding Assessment: Effects of Cultural Bias on Childhood Development
A lack of culturally or linguistically sensitive assessments and/or evaluators can lead to high rates of disproportionality in referrals to special services.
Understanding Assessment: Understanding the Normal Distribution
A normal distribution, also called a bell curve, occurs when variables (i.e., test scores) plotted on a graph fall into a regular distribution around a single mean. In a normal distribution, about 96% of the scores will fall within 2 standard deviations of the mean.
Understanding Assessment: How Does Linguistic Bias Affect Language Evaluations?
Linguistic bias can be bias towards speakers of other languages or dialects, or towards bilingual speakers and results in inaccurate assessment of children from linguistic backgrounds other than Standard American English.
Understanding Assessment: Standard Deviation
A standard deviation (SD) is a quantity derived from the distribution of scores from a normative sample and can be defined as the average distance (or deviation) from the mean.
Understanding Assessment: Problems with Percentile Rank and Age Equivalency
The percentile rank of a score is percentage of total scores from the normative sample that were equal or lesser than the value of the score and can be plotted on the bell curve of a normal distribution.
Understanding Assessment: Assessment Materials- Dynamic vs. Static Assessment
A variety of assessment materials and procedures, including both static and dynamic assessments and language samples, are frequently used in speech and language as well as psychoeducational evaluations.
Understanding Assessment: Understanding the Normative Sample
The terms normative sample and standardization sample refer to the same concept and are often used interchangeably. A norm referenced test uses a normative or standardization sample from the general population to determine what is “typical” or “normal” in that population.
