I teach psychometrics and measurement– now at the Ph.D. level at UCI. Previously at the MA level at UT. And I’ve often talked about how to select tests for diagnostic decision making. We want to select measures that do the job! For making a decision about whether someone has an impairment or not, we need to use procedures that have good sensitivity and specificity. Validity and reliability is good, but not enough.
I used to have an assignment in my class for MA students where they had to select a set of measures for a fictional speech and language clinic, given a budget. They had to review and justify their purchases, covering the target age range, possible needs and disorder categories. Importantly, they needed to select measures that did the job. I figured they would leave with a good list of possible measures that work (easy b/c MOST DON’T!!). From time to time, someone will ask me for the list of tests and I hunt it down and send it out. I finally decided to make it easy on myself and to make the list into a viewable google sheet. The bolded measures are those that report sensitiity and specificity of at least 80%. These are the ones that do the job. I also know that there are newer and updated measures, and new information on old measures. If you want to help update the list, here’s a form you can complete. It will automatically update in the google sheet under the new measures tab.
2 Languages 2 Worlds 