An examination of the psychometric properties of the Test of Reading Performance using structural equation modeling

The present purpose was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Test of Reading Performance, a new scale designed to evaluate the reading performance of Greek elementary school students. The sample consisted of 181 elementary school students, attending Grades 1-6 at two elementary schools in the area of Thessaloniki. The Test of Reading Performance was hypothesized to measure six constructs, namely, letter knowledge, phoneme blending, word identification, morphology knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and passage comprehension. Each construct was defined by two to four measured variables. The chosen structural model supported the multidimensional nature of reading and the relationship between the measured variables and constructs. Estimates of discriminant and convergent validity using confirmatory factor analytic procedures were satisfactory although these was multicollinearity for the measures morphology-syntax and morphology-comprehension. Internal consistency was also satisfactory for the full scale (alpha = .83).