Description

The Screening and Investigation Test for Reading Difficulties is a structured assessment tool designed to evaluate the main cognitive and language-related components that support the development of reading ability.

It is intended for children in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade of primary school and is used for the early identification of difficulties that may affect the acquisition of reading skills.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the instrument is the early detection of children who experience reading difficulties, so that appropriate educational support and intervention can be provided as early as possible.

At the same time, the test aims to investigate the specific cognitive and linguistic functions that contribute to reading and may be associated with difficulties in reading development.

Structure

The test includes 9 assessment tasks, covering four major areas of cognitive and psychological functioning:

• Visual-perceptual functioning
• Auditory perception and processing
• Vocabulary ability
• Phonological awareness and ability

The tasks include activities such as copying, completing incomplete sentences, phoneme discrimination, segmenting words into syllables, and reading words and texts.

Standardization Sample

The instrument was standardized on a total sample of 1,180 children, distributed as follows:

• 400 kindergarten children
• 392 first-grade primary school students
• 388 second-grade primary school students

All participants had Greek as their native language.

Validity

The individual tasks demonstrated satisfactory content validity.

The correlation between the pseudoword reading task and the pseudoword repetition task was reported as r = 0.39, providing additional evidence regarding the relationship between related language-processing skills.

Reliability

Internal consistency was examined separately for each task and age group using Cronbach’s alpha.

For most tasks, coefficients were above 0.80, with the exception of the number-sequence memory task, for which the coefficient was 0.75.

Test-retest reliability coefficients ranged from 0.52 to 0.86, indicating variation in the temporal stability of the individual tasks.

Data Analysis and Use

The results may be used both for the identification of potential reading difficulties and for the development of a more detailed profile of each child’s underlying skills.

Performance across the individual tasks may help identify specific areas of difficulty, such as phonological processing, auditory discrimination, vocabulary ability, or visual-perceptual functioning.

Applications

The instrument may be used in educational, school, and special education settings for the early screening of reading difficulties and for planning appropriate support or intervention.

Its use is particularly relevant during the early stages of education, when early identification of difficulties may contribute to more effective support for subsequent reading development.

References

Porpodas, K. A. (2002). Reading. Patras: Self-published.

Porpodas, K. A. (2003). Learning and Its Difficulties: A Cognitive Approach. Patras: Self-published.