Help Me Tell My Story: Development of an Oral Language Measurement Scale

Help Me Tell My Story (HMTMS) is an assessment tool that uses a holistic approach and an electronic application to measure the oral language development of pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children. It includes access to an online portal that provides meaningful information to caregivers, educators and administrators. This study examines the psychometric properties of one of the five questionnaires included in the HMTMS assessment, which explores the ability of children to talk to family members, friends and teachers. It uses an unrestricted partial credit Rasch version to analyse data from 844. children. Results indicate that, although we obtained a modest reliability index, the scale's psychometric characteristics are within effective ranges, as no response dependency was found and the items constitute a unidimensional scale. There is no differential item functioning (DIF) related to gender, grade levels and ethnicity on this scale. Thus this assessment tools is appropriate for use in early years oral language measurement.