Journal Article

Assessing Instructional Placement with the IRI: The Effectiveness of Comprehension Questions

Peterson, Joe, Tierney, Robert J., Jean Greenlaw, M.

1978

Overview

This study was designed to determine whether different sets of questions generated for an Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) would yield different instructional placement of students. Using identical passages, trained educators following published criteria wrote questions for an IRI. Three question sets were selected and all were administered to 57 elementary students in grades two through five. The order of administration of the three sets was rotated to counter a learning effect Correlations between the instructional placements indicated by the question sets did not approach the reliability coefficient necessary for interpretation of individual results. Lack of agreement across the three sets of questions raised the question of dependability of placement of students on the basis of their ability to respond to questions derived from the question-generating guidelines under consideration.

• Publisher: Routledge,Heldref Publications,Public School Pub. Co. for the University of Illinois, Bureau of Educational Research
• Subject: Correlation coefficients / Educational administration / Frequency distribution / Informal reading inventories / Reading / Reading comprehension / Standard deviation / Students