The Effects of Revised Language on the Performance of Nine to Fourteen Year Old Deaf Students on the Stanford Achievement Test

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects which language revisions had on the performance of 9 to 14 year old deaf students with regard to specific subtests of the Stanford Achievement Test. An experimental design was used for the study. The sample consisted of 31 severely or profoundly deaf students, ranging in age from 9 to 14 years, who were enrolled at a residential school for the deaf. The subjects varied in grade level, intelligence, socioeconomic background, cause of hearing loss, receptive and expressive language capability and age at which formal education began. For the purposes of this study the subjects were divided into two groups. One group of students was used to examine the effects of language revisions on the Arithmetic subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test. The other group was used to examine the effects of language revisions on the Science/Social Studies Concepts subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test. For the first testing situation all students were given several subtests of the Stanford Achievement Test during the annual school-wide testing program. In the second testing situation the students were given an alternate form of either the Arithmetic subtest of the Primary I Battery Stanford Achievement Test or the Science/Social Studies Concept subtest of the Primary II Battery Stanford Achievement Test. In the second testing situation the subtests used had language revisions which were made by the researcher. The instrument used for the first test situation was the published version of the Stanford Achievement Test, Form X. For the second testing situation, the researcher revised the language on the Primary I Battery Arithmetic subtest and the Primary II Battery Science/Social Studies Concepts subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test, Form W. In both testing situations the directions in the administration manual were to be followed. The questions on both the Arithmetic subtest and the Science/Social Studies Concepts subtest were to be read to the students. Some adaptations were made to meet the needs of deaf students. For example, time limits were extended on subtests which were presented orally to allow for use of the Rochester Method. Also tests presented using the Rochester Method were accompanied by a script which the students could refer to in addition to the oral presentation. The directions were followed with the group using the Arithmetic subtest. In both testing situations the questions were read to the students using the Rochester Method. The group using the Science/Social Studies Concepts subtest used the same procedure in both testing situations, but directions from the administration manual were not followed. The questions were not read to the students. Students were only given a script from which to read the questions. A correlated t test was used to analyze the data at the .05 level of significance. The results indicated that revising the language on the Science/Social Studies Concepts subtest did not significantly affect the mean raw score when compared with the mean raw score on the published version of that subtest. Students did not score significantly higher on the revised version as compared with the published version of the Science/Social Studies Concepts subtest. However, the revisions made to the Arithmetic subtest did significantly affect the mean raw score when compared with the mean raw score on the published version of that subtest. Students scored significantly higher on the revised version than on the published version of the Arithmetic subtest.