Interpreting Reading Comprehension Test Results: Quantile Regression Shows that Explanatory Factors Can Vary with Performance Level

Publication Date

3-15-2017

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Reading comprehension, Quantile regression, Standardized tests

Abstract

One of the most important findings to emerge from recent reading comprehension research is that there are large differences between tests in what they assess—specifically, the extent to which performance depends on word recognition versus listening comprehension skills. Because this research used ordinary least squares regression, it is not clear that the findings apply similarly to poor and good readers. The current study uses quantile regression to assess whether there might be differences within tests in the relative contributions of component skills as a function of performance level. There were 834 individuals (ages 8–18) who took 5 reading comprehension tests. Quantile regression showed that, for 3 of 5 tests, the contributions of word recognition and listening comprehension vary as a function of reading comprehension skill. These quantile differences hold across both younger and older readers. Our findings show that what skills a test assesses vary not only with the specific test used but also with how well the person performs.

Copyright Date

3-15-2017

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Rights Holder

Society for the Scientific Study of Reading

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Hua, A. N., & Keenan, J. M. (2017). Interpreting reading comprehension test results: Quantile regression shows that explanatory factors can vary with performance level. Scientific Studies of Reading, 21(3), 225-238. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2017.1280675

Publication Title

Scientific Studies of Reading

Volume

21

Issue

3

First Page

225

Last Page

238

ISSN

1532-799X

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