Date of Award

6-1987

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Dr. Lawrence Schlack

Second Advisor

Dr. David Cowden

Third Advisor

Dr. Dorothy Bladt

Abstract

The emphasis on the importance of early childhood education has brought attention to techniques used in determining the readiness of young children to successfully undertake kindergarten programs.

The Project Intercept Inventory is a criterion-referenced prekindergarten screening test that has been used in the Grand Rapids, Michigan public schools for 12 years. The test consists of 21 items distributed among seven developmental areas. The test was locally developed and no previous analyses had been done to determine the reliability and validity of the test.

The information gained from the use of this test has been used in making educational programming recommendations for thousands of entering kindergarten children.

The purpose of this study was to examine the Project Intercept Inventory for item difficulty, item discrimination, reliability, construct validity, content validity, and criterion validity. An examination was also done to determine the presence or absence of bias in the test items relating to gender and to race.

The data were gathered from the screening results of over 500 children taken in the spring of 1980. This group of children was intended to enter kindergarten in the fall of 1980. Nine hypotheses were developed to aid in examining the screening test.

The study results indicate that: (1) the majority of the test items are appropriately difficult to screen for kindergarten readiness; (b) the majority of test items would aid in discriminating among children's abilities, (c) the test can be regarded as reliable, (d) the test has adequate content validity, (e) the test has adequate construct validity, (f) the test has adequate criterion validity, (g) the test can adequately predict future school success as measured by later educational achievement tests, (h) the majority of test items did not reflect bias due to gender, and (i) the majority of test items did not reflect bias toward majority or minority test takers.

The major conclusion reached was that the use of the Project Intercept Inventory can provide beneficial information for educators for use in preparing educational recommendations that affect kindergarten children as they are about to enter school.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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