Standardized Administration DOES Matter

(These assessments are formally called Individual Growth and Development Indicators, or IGDIs.)

Standardization of administration procedures, which includes: timing, appropriate prompting, administering sample items—is critical so that you get accurate results.

By standardizing, we mean that IGDIs are administered in exactly the same way, for each child, across different assessment periods. This assures that IGDIs are administered accurately and reliably.

Standardized administrations will minimize any systematic or unnecessary error. By standardizing, we are increasing the accuracy or reliability of our scores from one administrator to the next, from one child to the next, and for an individual child's scores from time a to b to c to d.

I. How To Standardize Each Administration

Each IGDI comes with a set of administration instructions. On the administration cards, bold print indicates exactly what the examiner should say.

1. Always Begin with Sample Items

If the child meets the criteria indicated in the sample items, move to administration. Discontinue criteria are provided for the picture naming, rhyming, and alliteration measures. These criteria provide an indication of whether a child a). understands the task at hand and b). has sufficient skills for continuing with the administration.

For example, the discontinue criteria for picture naming is as follows: The child is administered four sample cards (baby, bear, apple, cat). The administrator may stop administration if the child does not name all four of these pictures correctly.

2. Timing

Each IGDI should be administered using a stopwatch according to the exact time specified.

3. Prompting

Be Careful Not To Provide Corrected Feedback During Administration

During IGDI "Administration" (not referring to sample card administrations) it is important not to prompt or provide feedback for correct or incorrect responses. Reinforcing statements such as "great," "good job," etc. are encouraged. However, feedback should not correspond to correct or incorrect responses made during administration (e.g., "that was right, " "that was wrong, etc)."

II. What Happens When Administration Is Not Standardized

"Melissa's" teacher administered the rhyming IGDI to Melissa on Oct. 14th and got a score of 7. She then administered rhyming again on Nov. 14th and got a score of 14. It appears that Melissa grew considerably in rhyming skill during this month. However, Melissa's teacher indicated that she didn't use a stopwatch. Instead, she used a clock with no second-hand during both administrations. She simply estimated 2-minutes time.

Here, we have a situation where we can not be sure whether Melissa actually grew in rhyming skill, since it may be that there was simply more time allotted to her during her second administration. Furthermore, lets say Melissa's teacher administered rhyming to all her students without timing exactly 2 minutes. In this case, we can not make accurate comparisons across students since maybe some student may have done better than others, simply because they were allotted more time.

NOTE: IGDIS SHOULD BE USED FOR ASSESSMENT PURPOSES ONLY

IGDIs are indicators or assessment tools. Therefore, they are not meant to be used as flashcards, or as instructional aids. In order to facilitate children's language development or rhyming skill, there are many things one can do, such as reading books, singing rhyming songs or playing rhyming games, etc. IGDIs should be used for assessment purposes only and not for teaching purposes.