The development and validation of the Short Language Measure (SLaM): A brief measure of general language ability for children in their first year at school.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The results indicated that SLaM has excellent psychometric properties. It can be used to identify children who need further evaluation by a speech-language pathologist. What this paper adds What is already known on this subject Prior research suggests that combining a direction-following and a sentence-recall task has sufficient discrimination accuracy and agreement with an omnibus language measure. Trialling a large set of direction-following and sentence-recall test items to select those with the highest individual characteristics could result in an effective short-language measure. What this paper adds to existing knowledge A short-language measure (SLaM) was created and validated on two independent samples of children. Items with the highest validities, reliabilities and discrimination capacities were selected to form SLaM. This procedure resulted in a measure with high validity and reliability that exceeded the criterion for adequate discrimination accuracy. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? SLaM is an effective measure that can accurately identify children who require detailed evaluations by speech-language pathologists. PMID: 32043737 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Int J Lang Commun Disord Source Type: research