Persian Articulation Assessment for Children Aged 3 - 6 Years: A Validation Study

The present study aimed to adapt articulation assessment, a subtest of the diagnostic evaluation of articulation and phonology, and to determine its reliability and validity for Persian speaking children.
The Persian version of articulation assessment (PAA) was administered to 387 children aged between 36 - 72 months, M (SD):53.7 (± 10.1) by month, after the adaptation process. A methodological study including test–retest reproducibility, score-rescore consistency and evaluating validity (through content, convergent and discriminative validity) was then carried out in order to determine the psychometric properties of the instrument.
Content validity ratio for Persian item’s content coverage, agreement image and syllable structure were 0.86 - 1, 0.92 and 0.94, respectively. Minimum content validity index of 0.93 exceeded in terms of relevancy, simplicity and clarity of instructions. The percentage agreement for the test-retest was 91.35-100% and the score-rescore analysis was 92.95-100%. The convergent validity was reasonable. The Persian Articulation Assessment’s mean scores for individuals with articulation disorders being significantly lower than those by normal children, showed discriminative validity (t = 7.245, df = 34, P The Persian version of Articulation Assessment is suggestive of a reliable and valid instrument for evaluating the articulation skills in Persian speaking children.