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APEL Español

The purpose of this project is to expand the suite of psychometrically robust measures for Spanish-speaking dual-language learners by developing and validating new measures for 3-year-olds. We will develop and vertically scale all new measures as well as develop and test a new digital platform to compile the entire suite of IGDI tools and improve the speed and efficiency of future measure development.

Study design

This project includes 3-year-old Dual Language Learners who speak Spanish and English. Students will be recruited from the Pacific Northwest(California and Oregon), Puerto Rico, and Minnesota to recruit a diverse sample. Methods include Rasch modeling for item calibration, differential item functioning via the Rasch-Welch statistic to evaluate bias in the item content, confirmatory factor analysis to confirm unitary construct representation, Pearson’s r to correlate IGDIs-Escores with criterion measures, Receiver Operator Curve analyses to examine sensitivity and specificity and contrasting groups design analyses to set cutscores.

Community Focus Groups

At each stage of development we will recruit 10 parents, teachers and stakeholders to review assessment materials for feasibility, utility and bias.

Student Assessment

A total of 600 children will participate in item testing, calibration and standard setting to develop measures.

App Development

The existing IGDI APEL interface in English provides teachers with technology-based tools for assessment and intervention including computer-adaptive test, automated scoring and visual displays of scores. This project will redesign our digital tools to accommodate assessments in multiple languages and allow research content management for rapid prototyping of new assessment measures.

People

Alisha Wackerle-Hollman, principal investigator

Lillian Durán, co-principal investigator

Funding

Institute of Education Sciences