Full Name of the Test	Rhode Island Test of Language Structure
Authors	Elizabeth Engen; Trygg Engen
Year of Publication	1983
Publisher	University Park Press
Current Cost (include a list of additional materials such as score forms, etc.)	139.00
Purpose of the test	Recognizes two needs in language assessment: to provide a measure of language development that can supply significant information about a child’s level of development. to provide assessment in sufficient depth and range to allow for educational planning This test was developed to provide a broad picture of a child’s understanding of language structure.
Ages for whom the test is intended	3 through 20 with hearing impairments; 3 through 6 without hearing impairments
List Subtests	None
Describe the normative sample	91 kindergarten children for the hearing group with a mean age of 5 years 6 months The group represented socio-economic classes and traditions found in the area. Language or learning impaired children and children from non-English speaking families were eliminated from the sample. The hearing impaired subjects consisted of 69 children ranging in age from 5 to 16 from the Rhode Island School for the Deaf. They presented a range of hearing losses and etiologies. The hearing group was testes in the speech therapists room in the school with only the child and the experimental present. The hearing impaired subjects were tested in their classrooms during periods when the remainder of the class was out of the room.
Are the norms appropriate for use in Boone?	No.
Describe how reliability was established	Reliability was evaluated with Kuder Richardson formula 20 (KR-20). The result was 0.72 for the 91 hearing pilot subjects and 0.88 for the 69 hearing impaired subjects that seemed to provide an adequate basis for further development of the test with larger and more diverse groups.
Describe how validity was established	Validity was considered using content-oriented validity and construct validity. The first concerns how well the RITLS samples language comprehension as defined linguistically and in a picture verification task of salient sentences. The structures used in the test are precisely definable. The criteria are sentence type which are determined by linguistic analysis.
Describe a situation for which it would be chosen over the other tests	It could be used as a screening battery for school readiness and early detection of problems that might interfere with success in school.
Describe a situation for which it should not be chosen over the other tests.	If a clinician wants to use an assessment tool that has a set criterion for satisfactory performance or order of acquisition, then he/she should not administer the RITLS.