Ratings of everyday academic and cognitive skills in evaluation of school learning and learning problems: initial scale development and validation

摘要

Although research supports the use of measures of typical performance forassessing academic and cognitive skills, there are currently few such measures inexistence. Other measures have been used for research purposes, but they are not normedon a large, nationally-representative sample. The Ratings of Everyday Academic andCognitive Skills (REACS) was created to address the need for a measure of typicalacademic and cognitive skills. The goal of the REACS is to provide a timely, easy toadminister, and comprehensive assessment of a child's typical functioning in variousacademic and cognitive domains. The purpose for this dissertation was to develop theinitial scale and conduct analyses to provide evidence of its reliability and validity.In an attempt to provide preliminary evidence of the validity of scores from thismeasure, Parent (n = 142) and Teacher (n = 109) REACS forms were collected for dataanalysis. A subsample of parents and teachers completed forms to examine interrater andtest-retest reliability. A group of children (n = 32) were assessed with measures ofacademic achievement, cognitive ability, and memory for comparison to the REACS. Results generally showed high internal consistency, yet less reliable test-retestand interrater reliability. While the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the parentscale supported a factor structure that approximated the intended structure of theREACS, a better fit was found with a simpler model for the teacher scale. Finally, boththe Parent and Teacher REACS forms were found to predict academic achievementbetter than cognitive ability. The predictive ability of the REACS was enhanced whenused in conjunction with a measure of cognitive ability.