The purpose of this study was to determine the psychometric characteristics of a phonological awareness assessment for prekindergarten children using Messick's (1989) framework for unitary construct validity. Upon entry into prekindergarten, children were given rhyme discrimination, syllable segmentation, initial phoneme isolation, and phoneme blending assessments drawn from The Phonological Awareness Test (Robertson & Salter, 1997). Item analyses indicated high internal consistencies, but some tasks were fairly difficult for the age group. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the four phonological awareness tasks have two correlated factors that underlie the measurement (large unit and small unit tasks). Multiple regression analysis showed that all four tasks had significant predictive validity for alphabetic knowledge. Given the paucity of standardized phonological awareness tests for children under 5 and the increased attention to preliteracy assessment, this off-level use of the test has the advantage of providing an ongoing examination of children's early and later phonological awareness development using the same instrument.
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