The purpose of the study was to develop an instrument comprised of two parts (English and Greek) that would measure the language dominance of Greek bilingual children attending Grades 1-4 in the United States. The instrument is expected to assist school personnel, educators, and researchers to objectively determine children's language dominance for placement and instructional purposes. / An item pool of 80 items for each language part (60 multiple choice and 20 free-response items) was pilot-tested in the Greek bilingual schools of Tarpon Springs, Florida, and field-tested in New York and Chicago. The subjects, over 400 in number, were about equally distributed over the four grades and equally divided by sex. Data analyses included: item analyses, test reliabilities, test-retest reliabilities, reliabilities by school and by sex, and an examination of the instrument's concurrent validity. / The 40 best items (30 multiple choice and 10 free-response items) of the 80-item pool for each language part were selected to comprise the final instrument. Item selection was based primiarily on two criteria: (a) lack of statistically significant differences between the Greek and English counterpart items and (b) a minimun of a .30 point biserial value for each item. / The overall test reliability values obtained for the final 40-item instrument were .92 and .93 for the English and Greek parts, respectively, and .84 for the difference between English and Greek scores. Finally, the instrument was further examined for its concurrent validity, using teacher ratings as a criterion measure. A correlation obtained between teacher ratings and instrument scores of student language dominance showed an overall concurrent validity of .47. / In addition to being useful for both diagnostic and placement purposes of Greek bilingual students in Grades 1-4, the instrument may also be used as a model in development of a similar instrument for bilingual students in higher grades. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-09, Section: A, page: 3862. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74275 |
| Contributors | MICHOPOULOS, ARISTOTLE V., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 173 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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