| EVT FAQ: | |
| Question |
Answer |
| I have been told that the PPVT-III is co-normed with the EVT. What does that mean and what is the advantage of co-norming? |
Being co-normed means that the PPVT-III and the EVT were standardized at the same time with the same population. The advantage of co-norming these two measures is that it enables the examiner to make direct comparisons of an examinee's receptive and expressive vocabulary. 
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| When I get to Item 41, the kids look at the picture and can't figure out what to say. What should I do? |
It's important to remember that Items 1 through 38 are labeling items and Items 39 through 190 are synonym items. For the synonym items, make sure you do Examples 3 and 4 before proceeding with administration. The examples are training items to help examinees understand the new task. Then be sure to read the word printed in bold on the Record Form. This is the prompt for which the examinee is to give a synonym. For example, when administering Item 41, you must give the prompt "mother" so the examinee doesn't have to guess what the label is for the picture.
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| Is there anything I can do when a child has not reached a ceiling on the labeling items but has difficulty switching to the synonym items? |
The author suggests the following:
- Do the two synonym examples with all children. Repeat if necessary. Add your own examples if you'd like (just be sure they are not already in the test).
- Use alternative wordings for prompting the synonym. A good one is: "I could call this a light. What can you call it?" or "Let's play a different game now. I'll say a name of something. You must tell me another name for it. My name for this is light. What is yours? What can you call it? Remember you can't say what I say."
- If the child just cannot make the switch and you've done the above, use the raw score from Labeling and note in the report that this is a "minimum" score. The last labeling items are actually harder than the first synonym items.
It's important to remember that developmental norms reflect development as a range of functioning and not as a fixed point. There is no "magic" age at which a child can do synonym items. Some four-year-olds may not be ready; others are ready, as evidenced by our standardization.
The plus in using synonym items is that you can sample a greater variety of parts of speech in the child's vocabulary. Labeling is restricted to what can be pictured (usually a noun).
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| Confidence intervals of only 90 and 95 percent are given in Table B1. I need to use a 68% confidence interval. How can I figure this? |
See page 67 in the EVT manual. Table 5.2 lists the standard errors of measurement (SEMs) for each age. When the individual's standard score on a test is banded by its SEM, there is a 68 percent chance that the individual's true score falls within this band or interval. Using the SEMs provided, examiners can construct confidence intervals of varying levels by multiplying the SEM for the examinee's age group by the z score associated with the confidence level chosen. The resulting value should be added to and subtracted from the observed standard score. If you want to use a 68% confidence interval for a four-year-old, for example, you would find the SEM of 4.0 on page 67 and multiply this by the z score for 68%, which is 0.5. Then you subtract 2 from and add 2 to the standard score.
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| To what extent is a test confidential? What information can parents be given? |
The child's parent has the right to "inspect and review" the
completed record form, in the presence of the qualified person who administered
the test or another qualified professional. The parent does NOT have the legal
right to make a copy of the form or to hand copy the information from the form.
The only part of the record form that can be photocopied is the page that contains
the score summary information (often the first page). We grant that permission
so professionals working with the child can share that information with each
other.
We have obtained copyright protection for all test materials. Details of test
items should not be released to persons who are unqualified to administer or
interpret them. According to IDEA guidelines, the child is best served by having
an expert interpret his/her test performance. Understanding the significance
of a child's performance on a test requires theoretical grounding in child
development and measurement and expertise in interpreting technical data, including
norms and validity studies. Most parents do not have this understanding or
expertise, which is why the federal guidelines were written so that only in
the presence of a qualified professional should the parent be shown the completed
record form.
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| What is the age range for the EVT?
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The EVT covers ages 2.6 years to 90+.
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| Should I have any concerns about using the EVT twice within several months for the same individual? |
Test-Retest Reliability is discussed in the EVT Manual in Chapter 5, pages 67 to 68. The standardization sample Test-Retest intervals ranged from 8 to 203 days, with a mean interval of 42 days. Table 5.3 depicts the results from the standardization test-retest. The mean values suggest only a minor practice effect. You should feel confident with your planned testing schedule.
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| Is it OK for the examinee to give a form of the correct response? For example, in Item 111, if the child says "rushing" instead of "rush" for the stimulus word hurry, isn't that close enough? Some acceptable responses include ing in parentheses. When you don't include the (ing), are we to assume that it is not an acceptable response?
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The Scoring Guidelines section of Chapter 2 of the EVT Manual states that "responses to stimulus words that are verbs in synonym Items 39 to 190 must match the stimulus word in both form and tense because item analysis demonstrated that words are retrieved in this manner" (page 15). Statistical evidence for the above statement is further detailed in Chapter 4 (page 47).
Some acceptable responses include ing in parentheses for two reasons. The first reason is that young children, whose language has not yet matured, often respond with present participles--adding "ing" to their responses. That is why you notice (ing) after many correct responses in the early items. As your examinees mature and their syntactic awareness advances, their expressive word retrieval appears to occur in the correct syntactic form.
The second reason is that some of the stimulus words can be more than one part of speech. For example, the stimulus word for Item 79 is quarrel. Quarrel is both a noun and a verb. Therefore, "fight(ing)" and "fuss(ing)" are given as correct responses. So quarrel and fighting are parallel forms, making "fight(ing)" an acceptable response. In Item 111, hurry and rushing are not the same form; therefore, "rushing" is not an appropriate response. If the list of correct responses in the manual does not include the (ing) form, then that form is not parallel to the stimulus word and therefore not an acceptable answer.
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