Validity and reliability of korean meta-pragmatic language assessment for children

Objectives: This study investigated the validity and reliability of the Korean meta-Pragmatic Language Assessment for Children (KOPLAC). The KOPLAC has been developed to assess 5- to 12-year-old children's pragmatic language ability. KOPLAC consists of three subtests: communication regulation, discourse and story information inferences, and metalinguistic awareness. Two hundred and seventy typically developing children participated in this study. Methods: For content validity, a 5-score-scale was conducted to validate each item. Five speech-language pathologists served as assessors and the mean score was 4.11. The correlation coefficients between each construct (5 subtests for preschoolers and 6 subtests for school-aged children) score and the total scores were calculated for construct validity. Results: Results showed significant correlation coefficients. For concurrent validity, the correlation coefficients between the results of the KOPLAC and the Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test (REVT) were analyzed. Every subtest is significantly correlated with REVT except for one (between metalinguistic awareness-references and REVT-expressive score). The internal consistency (Cronbach's α) was .45-.91 for preschoolers and .40-.86 for school-aged children. The split-half reliability was .652 for preschoolers and .726 for school-aged children. Finally, the test-retest reliability was significant and highly reliable (.79-.99). Conclusion: Results of this study indicated that the KOPLAC is a valid and reliable assessment tool for measuring children's pragmatic language ability. However, further studies should be conducted to validate the KOPLAC by providing data from children with language disorders, especially those who have pragmatic language problems.