Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research Vol.50 1631-1638 December 2007. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2007/110)
© American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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Construct Validity of the MCDI-I Receptive Vocabulary Scale Can Be Improved: Differential Item Functioning Between Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorders and Typically Developing Infants

Cornelia Bruckner
Paul Yoder
Wendy Stone
Megan Saylor
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

Contact author: Cornelia Bruckner, who is now with the Napa County Office of Education, 311 Professional Center Drive, Ronnent Park, CA 94928. E-mail: cornelia.bruckner{at}gmail.com.

Purpose: To evaluate whether the validity of the Receptive Vocabulary scale of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for Infants (MCDI-I; L. Fenson et al., 1991), a parent-report measure of early vocabulary, could be improved for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by removing items that are biased.

Method: Logistic regression was used to identify biased items. Items are considered biased if characteristics other than those being measured by the instrument change the probability that a person will get an item correct. Participants in the current study included 272 typically developing infants younger than 18 months of age and 209 toddlers with ASD older than 18 months of age. The age difference between the 2 groups is a result of matching on total size of the receptive vocabulary.

Results: Twenty-five items were identified as showing large bias.

Conclusion: Deletion of these items from the test should increase the degree to which the authors are measuring the size of the respondent's mental lexicon with the total score from the MCDI-I.

KEY WORDS: vocabulary, autism, modern test theory


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L. M. Hoffman, D. F. Loeb, J. Brandel, and R. B. Gillam
Concurrent and Construct Validity of Oral Language Measures With School-Age Children With Specific Language Impairment
J Speech Lang Hear Res, December 1, 2011; 54(6): 1597 - 1608.
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