A study was conducted to evaluate a new form of the Sentence Verification Technique (SVT) of measuring comprehension. The new form, called the Meaning Identification Technique (MIT), was designed to retain the property of requiring examinees to evaluate the meaning of the text while at the same time increasing test reliability and validity. One-hundred-three students from an undergraduate educational psychology class were administered a reading comprehension test based on either the traditional SVT or MIT format. Higher reliability coefficients were found for the MIT test and performance on the MIT was a better predictor of course exam scores than performance on either the traditional version of the SVT or the Scholastic Aptitude Test. These results suggest that the MIT has better reliability and the validity than the SVT.
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