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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1522740
This article is part of the Research Topic Methodological and Statistical Advances in Educational Assessment View all 8 articles
EuleApp©: A Computerized Adaptive Assessment Tool for Early Literacy Skills
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Special Needs Education and Rehabilitation, University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany
- 2 Institute of Sport Science, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Rostock, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
- 3 Institute for Special Educational Development Support and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Rostock, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
Ample evidence indicates that it is crucial for later academic success to assess children's early literacy skills, to provide them with the necessary support and materials, and to engage them in the culture of print and books before school entry. However, relatively few assessment tools are available to identify early literacy skills, such as concepts of print, print awareness, word awareness, alphabet knowledge, and early reading. The digital landscape presents new opportunities to enhance these assessments and provide enriching early literacy experiences. This study examines the psychometric properties of an adaptive assessment tool, EuLeApp©, focusing on its reliability and concurrent validity. Data involved 307 German kindergarten children (Mage = 64 months old, range = 45-91). A Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) method, grounded in Item Response Theory (IRT), was employed to develop an adaptive digital tool for assessing early literacy competencies. We utilized an automatic item selection procedure based on item difficulty and discrimination parameters for the 183-item pool to ensure a precise and efficient assessment tailored to each child's ability level. We identified the 4-parameter Logistic (4PL) model as the best-fitting model for adaptive assessment, and providing the highest precision in estimating children's abilities within this framework. The findings support the idea that the adaptive digital-based assessment tool EuLeApp© can be used to assess early literacy skills and
Keywords: early literacy, digital assessment, preschool age, item response theory, computerized adaptive test, Psychometric validation
Received: 04 Nov 2024; Accepted: 28 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yumus, Stuhr, Meindl and Jungmann. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Melike Yumus, Department of Special Needs Education and Rehabilitation, University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, 26129, Lower Saxony, Germany
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