The Persian version of phonological test of diagnostic evaluation articulation and phonology for Persian speaking children and investigating its validity and reliability

Speech and language pathologists (SLP) often refer to phonological data as part of their assessment protocols in evaluating the communication skills of children. The aim of this study was to develop the Persian version of the phonological test in evaluating and diagnosing communication skills in Persian speaking children and to evaluate its validity and reliability. The Persian phonological test (PPT) was conducted on 387 monolingual Persian speaking boys and girls (3-6 years of age) who were selected from 12 nurseries in the northwest region of Tehran. Content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) were assessed by speechtherapists and linguists. Correlation between speech and language pathologists experts'' opinions and Persian phonological test results in children with and without phonological disorders was evaluated to investigate the Persian phonological test validity. In addition، the Persian phonological test test-retest reliability was investigated. Both content validity ratio and content validity index were found to be acceptable (CVR≥94. 71 and CVI=97. 35). The PPT validity was confirmed by finding a good correlation between s peech and language pathologists experts'' opinions and Persian phonological test results (r Kappa =0. 73 and r Spearman =0. 76). The percent of agreement between transcription and analyzing error patterns in test-retest (ranging from 86. 27%-100%) and score-rescore (ranging from 94. 28%-100%) showed that Persian phonological test had a very high reliability. The results of this study show that the Persian phonological test seems to be a suitable tool in evaluating phonological skills of Persian speaking children in clinical settings and research projects.