Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the IRRI, a teacher assembled, individually administered, reading readiness inventory, and to determine whether the instrument could be used with confidence as a measure to predict the extent to which children would profit from formal reading instruction in kindergarten. The second purpose was to determine the relative importance of the six subtests of the IRRI in predicting success in beginning reading and then to determine which, if any, of the subtests could be removed from the inventory because they did not add meaningfully to its ability to predict reading performance. A third purpose was to determine what combination of subtests from the IRRI and the Metropolitan Readiness Tests (MRT) would be the most successful in predicting a pupil's achievement in reading as measured by the reading subtest of the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT).A sample of 113 kindergarten children from three schools in Dade County, Florida, participated in this study. Three tests were administered to each child: the IRRI, the MRT, and the reading subtest of the MAT.To determine concurrent validity, the Pearson r was computed between the IRRI and the MRT. To determine predictive validity, the Pearson r was computed between the IRRI and the reading subtest of the MAT. As estimate of the reliability of the IRRI based on the internal consistency of each subtest was derived using coefficient alpha. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine which of the subtests of the IRRI would be most useful in predicting reading achievement and which combination of subtests from the MRT and the IRRI would be the most successful in predicting reading achievement.The results indicated that the IRRI was a reliable and valid instrument to use in predicting the extent to which children will profit from formal reading instruction in kindergarten. Using three subtests of the IRRI, visual skills, concept development, and auditory skills, will yield information as valuable as if the whole inventory were administered. A combination of four subtests of the MRT, letter recognition, quantitative language, auditory memory, and school language and listening, and two subtests of the IRRI visual skills and auditory skills, will yield the best prediction of reading achievement.