A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF THE BILINGUAL VERSION OF KHATENA-MORSE MULTITALENT PERCEPTION INVENTORY

Abstract

Summary.-A bilingual version of the Khatena-Morse Multitalent Perception Inventory was designed to measure multitalent perception among Malaysian students. Forms A and B, each of 50 items, require the respondents to choose one of two alternatives. Test-retest reliability and criterion validity indexes for the Malaysian bilingual version suggested that it is suitable for assessing the multitalent perception as well as giftedness in various areas of talent. Replication with other groups is recommended. The Khatena-Morse Multitalent Perception Inventory (3) for identifying talent in leaderstup, music, art, and creative imagination, has been used in several studies (2, 5). Forms A and B contain 50 items each and give a measure of Versatility and facrors of Artistic, Musical, Creative Imagination, Initiative, and Leadership. The Versatility Index is the sum of affirmative responses (3). A bilingual version of the inventory was created to study the multitalent perceprion of Malaysian students. It consists of items in both Bahasa Melayu (the national language of Malaysia) and English. The English version was translated into Bahasa Melap by two teachers who were competent in both languages. The translated version was again translated back into English by two other competent teachers. Both English versions were compared ro ascertain the validity of translation. Any incorrect translation was modified. The resulting bilingual version containing items in both languages side by side was then pilot tested using 30 Form Four (U.S. Grade 10) students who were then interviewed to ascertain whether they understood the items. Any difficult item was then reworded and the version retested using another group of 30 students. A sample translated item is: 'Says suka tugas-tugas yang susah' for 'I prefer difficult tasks' (1). The resulting version was administered to 77 randomly selected Form Four students comprising 42 boys and 35 girls. These students are a representative sample of all Form Four Malaysian students. Their mean age was 16.1 yr. (SD = 0.3). The bilingual version was readministered after 5 weeks to the same students and the testretest reliabilities were estimated using the product-moment correlation. For the whole sample, test-retest reliability coefficients of the Versatility Indexes and the factors of Forms A and B were significant (p .01) for the initial testing but