The Convergent Validity of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency for the Beginning of First Grade

Abstract

The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a series of fluency-based measures designed to assess early literacy skills. These fluency-based measures function as predictors of future reading performance and target critical component skills required to learn to read. This study was conducted to establish the convergent validity of DIBELS with a standardized measure of phonological decoding ability and sight word reading fluency, the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE) (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1997). The TOWRE has been shown to have sufficient reliability and validity as a measure of word reading ability (Torgesen et al., 1997). DIBELS and TOWRE subtests were administered to 202 first-grade students. Correlations were examined between scores on the DIBELS subtests of Letter Naming Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, Nonsense Word Fluency, and Word Use Fluency with the TOWRE subtests of Phonetic Decoding Efficacy and Sight Words. The DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency measure was found to have the strongest association with both the TOWRE Phonetic Decoding Efficacy and Sight Word subtests.