| OWLS FAQ: | |
| Question |
Answer |
| Do I need to buy both the OWLS & CASL? What is the difference between the two tests? |
It depends on your reason for testing. Both the OWLS and the CASL are by the same author and are based on the same theory of language. The OWLS is a relatively quick measure of receptive (Listening Comprehension), expressive (Oral Expression), and written language (Written Expression, which is packaged separately). Listening Comprehension and Oral Expression are composed of item tasks in the four language categories of lexical/semantic, syntactic, supralinguistic, and pragmatic. However, examinees don't take enough items in each of those categories to report separate category scores in OWLS. CASL takes that next step. CASL provides multiple tests (15 total) in all these categories, so clinicians can make an in-depth evaluation of language skills.
If you are looking for a quick receptive and expressive measure of language (especially one with a written component that will give you a global language composite), choose OWLS. If you need an in-depth diagnostic measure that gives you the flexibility of 15 highly reliable, stand-alone tests, choose CASL. Many clinicians need both. OWLS helps them determine that the examinee has a receptive or expressive processing problem. CASL gives clinicians a wealth of diagnostic information to pinpoint specific areas of concern and help in planning interventions.
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| Can you administer English speech and language tests to ESL children? |
You can administer any of our speech and language tests to ESL children and get some information about the child's English language skills. At least they will give you a baseline of receptive or expressive skills from which to measure progress. You just can't report a standard score. We recommend using
OWLS and CASL for this purpose because of the descriptive analysis sheets, which allow you to look more closely at the structural aspects of the child's language.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
How soon can I retest children using OWLS? |
You could probably retest as quickly as 4 to 8 weeks. The exception would be young children who have never been in an individual testing situation before. They are "learning" by experiencing the testing process and will probably do better on the second testing just because the situation is no longer new to them.
For any test/retest situation, the time interval depends on how much "learning of the test" (practice effects) will be reflected in score changes and how much will be due to a real difference in measured ability. If the test format is especially noteworthy, then there is probably a greater chance for a score increase to be due to a practice effect. In this case, the time interval should be sufficiently long (maybe a year) to reduce this confoundment.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
How do I handle double basals or ceilings in OWLS? |
For both the Listening Comprehension and Oral Expression subtests, the basic rule about double basals and ceilings is to count the lowest basal and the highest ceiling. This gives you complete performance information about the examinee.
If you use the computer ASSIST, you will realize that the computer does not score double basals and ceilings in the same way. Unfortunately, the computer cannot be programmed to look for a second basal or ceiling. It automatically stops at the first one it encounters. If you notice a double basal or ceiling when administering the test, hand-score the test and just enter a raw score into the computer (raw score entry). This will still enable you to get the score report and narrative.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
Can I use OWLS with someone older than 21? |
You can't report the scores because the OWLS was standardized only to age 21. You can, however, administer the OWLS to obtain qualitative information. The results will provide a sampling of the examinee's language and can be compared to a criterion or standard.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
Can I use OWLS with examinees who are not fluent in English? |
Because the OWLS was standardized with subjects who were fluent in English, you cannot report the scores. You could, however, determine the baseline for such individuals and then test again to determine progress.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
Is there any way to do item analysis on OWLS LC/OE without going through the test item by item to decide what each item tests and then generating goals from the patterns discovered? |
You needn't go through the OWLS and figure out what skill each item tests. That has been done for you on a reproducible worksheet (a folded 11x17-inch paper), which is enclosed with every package of OWLS LC/OE record forms and is also available online at: http://ags.pearsonassessments.com/assessments/owls_worksheets.asp. The worksheet contains the main task of each OWLS LC/OE item (Listening Comprehension on one side, Oral Expression on the other), as well as the key skill category (Lexical, Syntactic, Supralinguistic, Pragmatic) to which the item belongs. A simple + (if the examinee got the item correct) or - (for incorrect) in the open box indicating the skill category will give you a handy means of assessing which skill categories appear to be problematic and which appear to be strengths. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes for this task.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
Should scores on the OWLS, PLS-3, and CELF-Preschool be comparable? |
Scores on the OWLS are very likely to be higher than those on the other two instruments. There is a valid reason for the difference in scores. Both CELF-Preschool and PLS-3 use a truncated sample-that is, they do not include any children with identified language disabilities in their standardization sample. The OWLS is based on a nationally representative normative sample, which includes special education students in approximately the same percentages that they occur in the general population. So you can see how students would score lower on a test with a truncated sample than on a test with representative norms.
You may be interested in an article in the ASHA journal Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools (Volume 27, Number 1, January 1996) entitled "Creating Language Impairments in Typically Achieving Children: The Pitfalls of 'Normal' Normative Sampling" by Teresa Ukrainetz McFadden. Many school districts are now insisting that testing be done with assessments based on representative norms that include special education students.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
I recently administered the OWLS LC/OE to a student who ended up with an Oral Expression standard score more than 10 points higher than that for Listening Comprehension. How can these results make sense? |
First, check to see if this difference is statistically significant. Scores are based on a normal distribution at every age, so there will be some examinees who will score higher in one test than in the other. The other thing you might consider is how engaged the examinee was in the Listening Comprehension test. Because Listening Comprehension is purely receptive and requires the examinee to simply point, children who are not engaged in the task might be pointing at just anything. Oral Expression, on the other hand, forces examinees to be more engaged because it requires a verbal response.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
How are start points for the different ages assigned? |
A start point for an age is set 1½ standard deviations below the mean in Rasch ability for that age based on standardization data. This assumes that at least 75 percent of that age group will get the start item correct. The items are ordered according to difficulty based on our standardization data. Because we want children to have some success at the beginning of the test and to learn and understand the task, we start them earlier.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
Can I count the response "the three boys is running" as correct for Item 30 when I test a student who uses African American dialect? |
According to Standard English, "the three boys is running" is grammatically incorrect.
When we did bias analysis on the items of the OWLS, these items were no more
difficult for African American students than for any other group. In other words,
children who spoke dialect were as apt to get the item right as any other ethnic
or geographic group.
The purpose of the task is to determine if the child knows and correctly uses subject-verb agreement. Have you encountered code switching with the child? If the child knows the difference between Standard English and dialect and can code switch, use your clinical judgment to score the item. If this is a regional expression, and the child's verbs agree with their subjects in most other items, count the item correct. If the child does not know the correct usage of the subject-verb agreement, score the item as incorrect.
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LC/OE QUESTION:
Item 69 of Listening Comprehension reads Although the hair style at school was straight and long, Amy liked her hair frounced and short Show me Amy's hair. Is the word frounced a mistake? |
Item 69 is not a vocabulary item; it belongs to the Supralinguistic category. People are not expected to know the meaning of frounced. Instead, this is an item that assesses the ability to infer the meaning of an unknown word from context. To make this effective, we had to choose a word that people would not recognize. The sentence is set up as a contrast with parallel modifiers: "straight and long" contrasts with "frounced [curly] and short." This item is meant to assess higher-order language skills that are needed mainly by junior high and high school students. Further information on Supralinguistic items is given in the OWLS manual on pages 10 and 21
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LC/OE QUESTION:
To what extent is a test confidential? What information can parents be given?
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The child's parent has the right to "inspect and review" the completed record
form, in the presence of the qualified person who administered the test or another
qualified professional. The parent does NOT have the legal right to make a copy
of the form or to hand copy the information from the form. The only part of the
record form that can be photocopied is the page that contains the score summary
information (often the first page). We grant that permission so professionals
working with the child can share that information with each other.
We have obtained copyright protection for all test materials. Details of
test items should not be released to persons who are unqualified to administer
or interpret them. According to IDEA guidelines, the child is best served by
having an expert interpret his/her test performance. Understanding the significance
of a child's performance on a test requires theoretical grounding in child
development and measurement and expertise in interpreting technical data, including
norms and validity studies. Most parents do not have this understanding or
expertise, which is why the federal guidelines were written so that only in
the presence of a qualified professional should the parent be shown the completed
record form.
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WRITTEN EXPRESSION QUESTION:
I tested a seven-year-old child who missed two-thirds of the items on the OWLS Written Expression Scale but still came out with a standard score of 104 and a stanine of 6. Can this be right? |
The OWLS was standardized on approximately 1,800 subjects (matching the census figures regarding race/ethnicity, gender, region, and socioeconomic background) throughout the United States. The item sets in the OWLS Written Expression contain varied tasks that are developmentally appropriate. Because seven-year-olds come to this test with such varied backgrounds (some have not written before, while others may have had writing instruction since preschool), it is not surprising that an average performance might mean that the child can perform well on only a third of the item set tasks.
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WRITTEN EXPRESSION QUESTION:
What impact does spelling have on performance on the OWLS Written Expression test?
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If students are scoring low on the Written Expression test, it is because their written expression is not presented in a way that is meaningful. Spelling constitutes only 27% of the score in the item set 1-20, 18% in the item set 12-24, 11% in the item set 21-32, and 16% in the item set 25-39. Using the Descriptive Analysis chart (see pages 226-231 in the manual) enables you to determine whether or not spelling is the major contributing factor to a child's low score. Our experience in testing thousands of children across the country, however, has been that this is very rarely the case.
Poor spelling is not indicative of a "writing disability," nor does the OWLS Written Expression test, by its scoring system or design, suggest that it is. Scoring for spelling is clearly delineated in the item-by-item scoring information on pages 60-109 of the manual.
Also refer to page 28 of the manual, where phonetic spelling is discussed: "Phonetic spellings are penalized in the OWLS Written Expression Scale only when scoring on rules associated with the Spelling category. Because phonetic spellings tend to indicate only incomplete knowledge and not a lack of spelling competence, the examinee who uses them should not be overpenalized. Semiphonetic spellings may indicate the examinee is at a lower developmental stage. The writer who spells semiphonetically may be in need of more instruction and modeling before his or her written work can convey meaning."
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