1439 Psychometric Properties of ALPE - Language Test (Teste De Linguagem-ALPE, TL-ALPE)

Abstract

ALPE - Language Test (Teste de Linguagem-ALPE, TL-ALPE) is a standardized receptive and expressive European-Portuguese (EP) language assessment instrument of to be used in pre-school age children in order to assess their semantic, morphosyntax and metalinguistic skills development. This paper describes the psychometric properties of TL-ALPE, i.e., - reliability (internal consistency, inter- and intra-judge reliability) and validity (content and construct validity). In order to standardize the TLALPE, 817 children (402 females and 415 males) with ages between [3;0-5;12[ were assessed across Portuguese mainland and islands. The TL-ALPE was applied by 42 trained and fully licensed SLPs. Preliminary results provided normative data about the EP speaking children: standardized norms (mean, standard deviation and percentile ranks). Results indicate that TL-ALPE presented a strong cohesion among the items analysed, a strong equivalence between the analysis performed by independent judges, and also a strong stability in the analysis performed by the same judge. Also seems to exist a strong correlation between TLALPE's data and those obtained in other EP studies (construct validity). TL-ALPE adequately measured the child's receptive and expressive language skills (content validity). In conclusion, the analysis of the preliminary results showed that TL-ALPE was a valid and reliable assessment instrument and can be used for early identification of oral language disorders.