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LAB 3 REPORT: SCORING AND INTERPRETING STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENTS

LAB 3: Scoring, Interpreting, & Reporting Percentile Scores

HDFS 421 | KRISTINA TIO | OCTOBER 23RD, 2017
INTRODUCTION
For Lab 3 Report, its purpose is to allow an opportunity for me to respond to a situation
where a parent is concern of her child’s language development as she thinks that her child’s
progress is not what she is exactly expecting to be. As the data of the child’s language has been
taken, it is my task to score, interpret and report the data in order to know what action that should
be done afterward. Also, I would need to write a report that would be presentable and
understandable to be shared with involved individuals such as my supervisor, the child’s parent,
and the child study team.
According to the data, the child’s name is Child A. The child is a female and she was
born on July 20th, 2009. The data was taken on September, 27th 2011, in which makes Child A to
be 26 months old at the time. The test-taker used MacArthur Communicative Development
Inventory: Words & Sentences (CDI) assessment, where it covers the language domain. The
assessment is a norm-referenced test, where the child’s score would be compared with a group of
children who have the same age as the child’s.
DATA SUMMARY
for more data, refer to appendix i
TABLE 1.1 Child A’s Report Form CDI: Words and Sentences Percentile

Number Percentile Rank

(out of overall # words) Both genders Female
WORDS PRODUCED 313 (out of 680) 37th 30th
WORD FORMS 6 (out of 25) 50th 40th

Length in morphemes of Child A’s

M3L Percentile Rank
three longest sentences (M3L)
(Mean)
Sentence 1 Sentence 2 Sentence 3 Both genders Female
5 3 3 3.67 32nd 27th
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LAB 3 REPORT: SCORING AND INTERPRETING STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENTS
TABLE 1.2 Child A’s Report Form CDI: Words and Sentences Percentage

Affirmative Percentage Affirmative

(Yes/No) Answers at 26 months old
child
HOW CHILDREN USE WORDS
Past Yes 82%
Future Yes 85%
WORD ENDINGS/PART 1
Plural (-s) Yes 78%
Possessive (-‘s) Yes 79%
Progression (-ing) No 64% (36%)
Past tense (-ed) Yes 48%

INTERPRETATION
As the assessment guide mentions about the significant reason in separating both genders
into their own percentile scores due to the tendency of female’s faster language development
compared with male’s, Child A’s data shows some consistency that her percentile ranks on both
genders are higher compared with the female one. From this analyzation, it can be concluded that
Child A’s language development still progresses along with her fellow 26 months female peers.
Since the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words & Sentences (CDI)
is a norm-referenced assessment, the data tends to form a bell curve where the 50th percentile
rank occasionally would be the “what is expected.” As Child A mostly falls into around the 30th
percentile, it shows that Child A’s proficiency is very close to the “expected” target. According
to Table 1.1, Child A’s vocabulary knowledge of 313 words puts her at the 37th percentile rank
on both genders and 30th percentile rank on female, where Child A falls into the 2nd quartile (26th
- 50th percentile) of the data. This would mean that Child A is closer to “what is expected” out of
her since she is in the same quartile with the students who have reached the “expected” level. As
for the Child A’s usage of word forms, she has achieved “what is expected” on both genders, but
fell 10% of children behind from being “expected” on the female percentile data. Again, she
would be grouped in the “expected” category as she would be in the range of Decile 4 (31st – 40th
percentile) and Decile 5 (41st – 50th percentile), where it would be around the middle point of the
bell curve. For the last category, which is the M3L, Child A falls at 32nd percentile rank on the
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LAB 3 REPORT: SCORING AND INTERPRETING STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENTS

both genders percentile data and 27th on the female one. As Child A is just on the border of the
2nd Quartile, it vaguely shows that Child A might need to get some extra guidance in her
sentence constructing skill to give her a nudge closer to the M3L mean that is expected out of her
age due to middle score of the data.
On the other hand, based on the data on Table 1.2, Child A is among 82% of the children
who can use word in referring to the past, and 85% of her age group to use word to refer the
future. Moreover, Child A is able to use word endings of plural as what 78% of her age group
would be able to do, possessive (79% of her age group), and past tense (48% of her age group).
One category that Child A has not yet developed on is using the progressive (-ing), which 36 %
of children her age has not as well. From looking at these data from Table 1.2, it shows that
Child A’s knowledge of variation in single morpheme is more abundant compared with his
vocabulary knowledge.
Aside from that, from this norm-referenced assessment, it does show that Child A’s
language development should not be a concern as her percentile ranks are at most 20% of
children away in reaching the “expected” standard and she is mostly among with her proficient
peers. However, as this assessment relies on the ordinal data, the scores itself lacks the
information on whether Child A’s language development does satisfy the standard that children
her age should achieve. Moreover, by constricting the raw data into percentiles, it limits the
readers to understand the real position of Child A in her language development. From the
uncertainty of the range percentiles due to the unknown variance, ordinal data would only give
out the rank of the child among the child’s age group instead of giving out information about the
proficiency of the child herself in order to inform the teacher’s instruction to scaffold the child.
At the end, I think the data above does put Child A in a big realistic picture that her
language development should not be a concern compared with her 26 months peers, but it is still
unsure on whether this normalized standard would be the efficient way in determining Child A’s
progress on her language development.

RECOMMENDATION
As the percentile data above is in an ordinal scale, it gives out the big picture of the
development of the child’s group in which satisfies the child’s parent concern in knowing
whether her child is developing based on what the child is expected to go through. However, I
would think that the data would be more beneficial if there would be an additional nominal data
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LAB 3 REPORT: SCORING AND INTERPRETING STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENTS

in order to set a realistic standard in determining whether Child A need some special support or
not. Afterward, if Child A does fall under the standard, the child’s parent should be informed and
an intervention would be conducted in order to support Child A’s language development. On the
other hand, if Child A goes over the standard, the parent would be informed about Child A’s
progress and some techniques that would maintain or even improve Child A’s language
development.

REFLECTION
From doing this assignment, it has made me realized that it is important to choose the
correct standardized instruments in order to get the desired information about a child. Moreover,
I have understood the differences between percentages and percentiles, in which has helped me
to correctly interpret and evaluate data that are obtained through formal assessments. Also, I
have learned that it is important for teachers to carefully communicate their findings with the
child’s parents as certain terminologies would mislead parents to think otherwise. From this case,
it is another reason for teachers to truly understand the assessments that they are using. Lastly, I
have realized that assessments are important tools to identify which children that would need
more guidance and even intervention to fulfill their special needs.
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LAB 3 REPORT: SCORING AND INTERPRETING STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENTS
APPENDIX I
CHILD REPORT FORM
CDI: WORDS AND SENTENCES