CA-ION POSITION OR POLICY

Listening comprehension and reading comprehensioa editions of an experimental test were rlevised to provide equivalent measures from which raw scores would be directly comparable. The test was designed for a four-place multiple-choice category format. Forms A and B were administered on a rotation basis for the study. The testing population consisted of 515 students from grades 4, 5, and 6, with approximately the same number of boys and girls at each level. The split-half reliability coefficients varied from.91 to.96 on the reading comprehension tests and from.82 to.88 on the listening comprehension tests. Listening was found to be statistically superior to reading comprehension in all grades. Mean differences between the two decreased at each successively higher grade level. It was also found that reading comprehension had a higher correlation with listening than with IQ, mental age, or sex. Students with IQ's above 110 had slight differences between listening and reading; those with TQ's below 110 were far superior in listening. Students with high verbal IQ scores had slight differences between listening and reading; those with high quantitative scores were superior in listening comprehension. There were no significant differences between boys and girls. Tables and references are included. (CM) OO C