A two-step sampling weight approach to growth mixture modeling for emergent and developing skills with distributional...

Area of Science:

• Educational Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Quantitative Psychology

Background:

• Emergent reading skills are foundational for reading fluency and comprehension.
• Assessing kindergarten entry reading skills is critical for educational decision-making.
• Early assessments often show floor effects (many zero scores) due to developmental timing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel two-step sampling weight approach for growth mixture modeling.
• To address challenges posed by changing score distributions in longitudinal studies.
• To apply this method to analyze emergent reading skill development in kindergarteners.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a two-step sampling weight approach within growth mixture modeling.
• Applied the method to data from 1911 kindergarten students.
• Analyzed letter sound fluency, a key emergent reading skill, across the academic year.

Main Results:

• The approach successfully modeled changing score distributions over time.
• Distinguished between students starting with zero scores who made progress and those who did not.
• Provided nuanced insights into early reading skill trajectories.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method offers a robust solution for growth modeling with changing distributions.
• Enables more accurate identification of students needing early reading interventions.
• Highlights the importance of considering initial skill levels and subsequent growth patterns.