DIBELS 6th Edition
Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
Summary
DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) is a standardized, individually administered test of phonological awareness. The PSF measure assesses a student’s ability to segment three- and four-phoneme words into their individual phonemes fluently. The PSF measure has been found to be a good predictor of later reading achievement (Kaminski & Good, 1996). The PSF task is administered by the examiner reading aloud words of three to five phonemes. Then, the student is asked to say the individual phonemes for each word. For example, the examiner says, “sat,” and the student says, “/s/ /a/ /t/” to receive three possible points for the word. After the student responds, the examiner presents the next word, and the number of correct phonemes produced in one minute determines the final score. The PSF measure takes about 2 minutes to administer and has over 20 alternate forms for monitoring progress. Cut points for intensive intervention are addressed in this application. Benchmark cut points, as well as cut points for intensive intervention, are available at https://dibels.uoregon.edu/docs/marketplace/dibels/DIBELS-6Ed-Goals.pdf
- Where to Obtain:
- University of Oregon
- support@dibels.uoregon.edu
- 5292 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403
- 1-888-497-4290
- https://dibels.uoregon.edu
- Initial Cost:
- Free
- Replacement Cost:
- Contact vendor for pricing details.
- Included in Cost:
- Describe basic pricing plan and/or cost structure of the tool, including, as applicable: cost per student per year, start-up or other one-time costs, reoccurring costs, training cost, and what is included in the published tool. Also, provide information on what is not included but required for implementation (e.g., computer and/or internet access.) All materials required for administration are available for free download at https://dibels.uoregon.edu. The DIBELS Data System (DDS) is not required, but is available for online data entry, management and reporting for a cost of $1.00 per student per year. Included with the DDS service is optional tablet based administration through the HiFi Reading app available for free download at the Apple app store. Training is required for assessors and is available through online DDS training modules. The cost of the training ranges from $40 - $79 per person. Additional costs include the cost of printing and the cost of a computer (required) and tablets (optional).
- The DIBELS directions are designed to be used unmodified with all students. They have been validated with tens of thousands of students to work the way they do. In a very small number of cases though, a small number of accommodations are approved. They are used only in situations where they are necessary to obtain an accurate score for a student. When approved accommodations are used, the examiner should mark an “A” on the front cover of the testing booklet. Scores with accommodations can be used as any another of DIBELS scores. Approved accommodations should only be used with students who have a documented need for such supports, not to improve performance for multiple students. DIBELS 6th Edition approved accommodations for PSF are: • Assistive technology (e.g., hearing aids, assistive listening devices)
- Training Requirements:
- 1-4 hrs of training
- Qualified Administrators:
- Yes, there are minimum qualifications.
- Access to Technical Support:
- Technical support is available from the DIBELS Data System at the University of Oregon, https://dibels.uoregon.edu (phone: 1-888-497-4290, email: support@dibels.uoregon.edu, hours of operation: 6:00am to 5:30pm Pacific Time, Monday through Friday).
- Assessment Format:
-
- One-to-one
- Scoring Time:
-
- Scoring is automatic OR
- 1 minutes per student
- Scores Generated:
-
- Raw score
- Percentile score
- Developmental benchmarks
- Error analysis
- Administration Time:
-
- 2 minutes per student
- Scoring Method:
-
- Manually (by hand)
- Automatically (computer-scored)
- Technology Requirements:
-
- Accommodations:
- The DIBELS directions are designed to be used unmodified with all students. They have been validated with tens of thousands of students to work the way they do. In a very small number of cases though, a small number of accommodations are approved. They are used only in situations where they are necessary to obtain an accurate score for a student. When approved accommodations are used, the examiner should mark an “A” on the front cover of the testing booklet. Scores with accommodations can be used as any another of DIBELS scores. Approved accommodations should only be used with students who have a documented need for such supports, not to improve performance for multiple students. DIBELS 6th Edition approved accommodations for PSF are: • Assistive technology (e.g., hearing aids, assistive listening devices)
Descriptive Information
- Please provide a description of your tool:
- DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) is a standardized, individually administered test of phonological awareness. The PSF measure assesses a student’s ability to segment three- and four-phoneme words into their individual phonemes fluently. The PSF measure has been found to be a good predictor of later reading achievement (Kaminski & Good, 1996). The PSF task is administered by the examiner reading aloud words of three to five phonemes. Then, the student is asked to say the individual phonemes for each word. For example, the examiner says, “sat,” and the student says, “/s/ /a/ /t/” to receive three possible points for the word. After the student responds, the examiner presents the next word, and the number of correct phonemes produced in one minute determines the final score. The PSF measure takes about 2 minutes to administer and has over 20 alternate forms for monitoring progress. Cut points for intensive intervention are addressed in this application. Benchmark cut points, as well as cut points for intensive intervention, are available at https://dibels.uoregon.edu/docs/marketplace/dibels/DIBELS-6Ed-Goals.pdf
ACADEMIC ONLY: What skills does the tool screen?
- Please describe specific domain, skills or subtests:
- BEHAVIOR ONLY: Which category of behaviors does your tool target?
-
- BEHAVIOR ONLY: Please identify which broad domain(s)/construct(s) are measured by your tool and define each sub-domain or sub-construct.
Acquisition and Cost Information
Administration
- Are norms available?
- Yes
- Are benchmarks available?
- Yes
- If yes, how many benchmarks per year?
- Two (beginning and middle of year). Beginning- and middle-of-year benchmarks are included for review in this submission.
- If yes, for which months are benchmarks available?
- Beginning months are typically September, October and November; middle months are December, January, and February; and end months are typically March, April, May and June. Regardless of when the benchmark occurs, we recommend that all students are tested within a one-month window. If DIBELS PSF is administered outside of that one month time frame, it should not be entered as the benchmark score for the student.
- BEHAVIOR ONLY: Can students be rated concurrently by one administrator?
- If yes, how many students can be rated concurrently?
Training & Scoring
Training
- Is training for the administrator required?
- Yes
- Describe the time required for administrator training, if applicable:
- 1-4 hrs of training
- Please describe the minimum qualifications an administrator must possess.
- Yes, there are minimum qualifications.
-
No minimum qualifications
- Are training manuals and materials available?
- Yes
- Are training manuals/materials field-tested?
- Yes
- Are training manuals/materials included in cost of tools?
- No
- If No, please describe training costs:
- Online training for administration and scoring of DIBELS 6th edition is available at https://dibels.uoregon.edu/training/. The cost of the training ranges from $40 - $79 per person and includes all DIBELS 6th Edition subtests. Cost depends on whether a group discount is applied, and whether the trainee is a DIBELS Data System customer.
- Can users obtain ongoing professional and technical support?
- Yes
- If Yes, please describe how users can obtain support:
- Technical support is available from the DIBELS Data System at the University of Oregon, https://dibels.uoregon.edu (phone: 1-888-497-4290, email: support@dibels.uoregon.edu, hours of operation: 6:00am to 5:30pm Pacific Time, Monday through Friday).
Scoring
- Do you provide basis for calculating performance level scores?
-
Yes
- Does your tool include decision rules?
-
Yes
- If yes, please describe.
- Grade-based, empirically determined cut points for risk and benchmark goals, based on ROC analyses predicting performance at the 20th and 40th percentile on the SAT-10 Total Reading.
- Can you provide evidence in support of multiple decision rules?
-
Yes
- If yes, please describe.
- Please describe the scoring structure. Provide relevant details such as the scoring format, the number of items overall, the number of items per subscale, what the cluster/composite score comprises, and how raw scores are calculated.
- The raw score consists of the number of different, correct, sound segments produces from verbally presented words in one minute. There is no cluster/composite score
- Describe the tool’s approach to screening, samples (if applicable), and/or test format, including steps taken to ensure that it is appropriate for use with culturally and linguistically diverse populations and students with disabilities.
- DIBELS PSF is a standardized, individually administered test of phonological awareness requiring students to say the sounds in words. This measure is typically administered from the middle to the end of kindergarten and can be used as a progress monitoring tool for students at-risk for later reading difficulties through first grade. During this task the examiner says a word and asks the student to say all the sounds in the word. This task is entirely auditory and requires no student materials. For example, if the examiner says “cat” a correct response would be “/k/ /a/ /t/”. Students are given credit for partially segmented words. The examiner continues to present words in a specified order for one minute. The student’s score consists of the number of different, correct sound segments correctly produced in one minute.
Technical Standards
Classification Accuracy & Cross-Validation Summary
| Grade |
Kindergarten
|
|---|---|
| Classification Accuracy for Criterion 1 Fall |
|
| Classification Accuracy for Criterion 1 Winter |
|
| Classification Accuracy for Criterion 1 Spring |
|
| Classification Accuracy for Criterion 2 Fall |
|
| Classification Accuracy for Criterion 2 Winter |
|
| Classification Accuracy for Criterion 2 Spring |
|
Legend
Convincing evidence
Partially convincing evidenceUnconvincing evidenceData unavailabledDisaggregated data available
Classification Accuracy - Criterion 1 Winter
| Evidence | Kindergarten |
|---|---|
| Criterion measure | Stanford Achievement Test: 10th Edition (SAT-10) |
| Cut Points - Percentile rank on criterion measure | 20 |
| Cut Points - Performance score on criterion measure | |
| Cut Points - Corresponding performance score (numeric) on screener measure | 28 correct sound segments |
| Classification Data - True Positive (a) | |
| Classification Data - False Positive (b) | |
| Classification Data - False Negative (c) | |
| Classification Data - True Negative (d) | |
| Area Under the Curve (AUC) | 0.79 |
| AUC Estimate’s 95% Confidence Interval: Lower Bound | 0.78 |
| AUC Estimate’s 95% Confidence Interval: Upper Bound | 0.80 |
| Statistics | Kindergarten |
|---|---|
| Base Rate | |
| Overall Classification Rate | |
| Sensitivity | |
| Specificity | |
| False Positive Rate | |
| False Negative Rate | |
| Positive Predictive Power | |
| Negative Predictive Power |
| Sample | Kindergarten |
|---|---|
| Date | 2003-06 |
| Sample Size | |
| Geographic Representation | Pacific (OR) |
| Male | |
| Female | |
| Other | |
| Gender Unknown | |
| White, Non-Hispanic | |
| Black, Non-Hispanic | |
| Hispanic | |
| American Indian/Alaska Native | |
| Other | |
| Race / Ethnicity Unknown | |
| Low SES | |
| IEP or diagnosed disability | |
| English Language Learner |
Reliability
| Grade |
Kindergarten
|
|---|---|
| Rating |
|
Legend
Convincing evidencePartially convincing evidenceUnconvincing evidenceData unavailabledDisaggregated data available
- *Offer a justification for each type of reliability reported, given the type and purpose of the tool.
- We evaluated alternate form reliability to assess the reliability of DIBELS 6th Edition PSF subtest. Alternate form reliability: Alternate-form reliability indicates the extent to which test results generalize to different item samples. Students are tested with two different (i.e., alternate) but equivalent forms of the test within some relatively short interval of time, and scores from these two forms are correlated. The use of alternate form reliability is justified because it uses different but equivalent forms, thereby preventing practice effects inherent in test-retest reliability where the same form is administered twice. In addition, it is important to establish that different forms are equivalent given the need to use different forms for progress-monitoring across year
- *Describe the sample(s), including size and characteristics, for each reliability analysis conducted.
- Study a: Alternate form reliability: Participants included 86 kindergarten students from a midsized city in Northwestern Massachusetts. Of the total sample, 93% were Caucasian, 2% African American, 2% Hispanic, and 2% Asian and consisted of 44 girls and 42 boys.
- *Describe the analysis procedures for each reported type of reliability.
- Study a: Alternate form reliability: All measures were administered in early March of the school year, and three alternate form probes were administered for DIBELS PSF. The maximum amount of time that elapsed between administrations was 3 school days.
*In the table(s) below, report the results of the reliability analyses described above (e.g., internal consistency or inter-rater reliability coefficients).
| Type of | Subgroup | Informant | Age / Grade | Test or Criterion | n | Median Coefficient | 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound |
95% Confidence Interval Upper Bound |
|---|
- Results from other forms of reliability analysis not compatible with above table format:
- Manual cites other published reliability studies:
- No
- Provide citations for additional published studies.
- Do you have reliability data that are disaggregated by gender, race/ethnicity, or other subgroups (e.g., English language learners, students with disabilities)?
- No
If yes, fill in data for each subgroup with disaggregated reliability data.
| Type of | Subgroup | Informant | Age / Grade | Test or Criterion | n | Median Coefficient | 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound |
95% Confidence Interval Upper Bound |
|---|
- Results from other forms of reliability analysis not compatible with above table format:
- Manual cites other published reliability studies:
- No
- Provide citations for additional published studies.
Validity
| Grade |
Kindergarten
|
|---|---|
| Rating |
|
Legend
Convincing evidencePartially convincing evidenceUnconvincing evidenceData unavailabledDisaggregated data available
- *Describe each criterion measure used and explain why each measure is appropriate, given the type and purpose of the tool.
- easyCBM Letter Sounds Score (LSS) is a individually administered screening measure to be used for establishing benchmarks and monitoring progress. It takes 1 minute to administer. The median of alternate form reliability is .85, and the median of test-retest reliability is .66. The measure’s predictive validity with SAT-10 is .68, and the concurrent validity with SAT-10 is .72. The TerraNova, second edition (CTB/McGraw-Hill, 1997) is a group-administered achievement test. The measure was nationally standardized on a stratified sample of 114,312 students (Grades 1-12) from 778 school districts during the fall of 1999 and another 149,798 students (Grades K-12) in the spring of 2000. Stratification variables included geographic region, urbanicity, socioeconomic status, and special needs. The TerraNova demonstrates acceptable internal consistency, with Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 coefficients for all subtests and total scores ranging from the middle .80s to .90s. Note that because phoneme segmenting is a very specific and rapidly developing skill, validity correlations with a general outcome measure, such as the SAT-10, at the end of the year are expected to be somewhat weaker than for skills that develop more consistently over time. However, they are still expected to be strong relative to Cohen’s rule of thumb for interpreting correlations (i.e., over .50).
- *Describe the sample(s), including size and characteristics, for each validity analysis conducted.
- Concurrent validity: The sample included 1,511 kindergarteners from a school district. Of the sample, 48% were males, 50% white, 21% American Indian/Alaskan Native, 7% Asian, 2% African American, and 2% Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders. The sample had 35% of Hispanic ethnicity. 27% of the students in the sample had LEP status, and 8% of the students were eligible for special education. Predictive validity: The study included a stratified, random sample of 330 kindergarten children, of whom 49% were males, with an average age of 66 months (SD = 3.8). In the sample, 55% were African American, 17% Caucasian, 17% Hispanic, 9% Asian, and 2% other. Thirty-one percent of these children qualified for free or reduced lunch.
- *Describe the analysis procedures for each reported type of validity.
- Concurrent validity: Correlations were examined for the strength of the associations between the predictor, (i.e., DIBELS PSF administered in winter of kindergarten), with the criterion measure, (i.e., easyCBM Letter Sounds Score administered in winter of kindergarten). Predictive validity: Correlations were examined for the strength of the associations between the predictor, (i.e., kindergarten DIBELS PSF), with the criterion measure, (i.e., easyCBM Letter Sounds Score as first grade outcome).
*In the table below, report the results of the validity analyses described above (e.g., concurrent or predictive validity, evidence based on response processes, evidence based on internal structure, evidence based on relations to other variables, and/or evidence based on consequences of testing), and the criterion measures.
| Type of | Subgroup | Informant | Age / Grade | Test or Criterion | n | Median Coefficient | 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound |
95% Confidence Interval Upper Bound |
|---|
- Results from other forms of validity analysis not compatible with above table format:
- Manual cites other published reliability studies:
- No
- Provide citations for additional published studies.
- Hintze, J. M., Ryan, A. L., & Stoner, G. (2003). Concurrent validity and diagnostic accuracy of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills and the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing. School Psychology Review, 32, 541-556. Rouse, H. R., & Fantuzzo, J. W. (2006). Validity of the Dynamic Indicators for Basic Early Literacy Skills as an indicator of early literacy for urban kindergarten children. School Psychology Review, 35, 341-355. Burke, M. D., Hagan-Burke, S., Kwok, O., & Parker, R. (2009). Predictive validity of early literacy indicators from the middle of kindergarten to second grade. The Journal of Special Education, 42, 209-226. Burke, M. D., Crowder, W., Hagan-Burke, S., & Zou, Y. (2009). A comparison of two path models for predicting reading fluency. Remedial and Special Education, 30, 84-95.
- Describe the degree to which the provided data support the validity of the tool.
- Overall, the validity of DIBELS 6th PSF measure is well supported by criterion measures. In kindergarten, DIBELS 6th PSF scores are moderately to strongly correlated with the easyCBM Letter Sounds Fluency, easyCBM Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, and Woodcock Johnson Total Reading, with validity coefficients ranging from r = .60 – .74.
- Do you have validity data that are disaggregated by gender, race/ethnicity, or other subgroups (e.g., English language learners, students with disabilities)?
- No
If yes, fill in data for each subgroup with disaggregated validity data.
| Type of | Subgroup | Informant | Age / Grade | Test or Criterion | n | Median Coefficient | 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound |
95% Confidence Interval Upper Bound |
|---|
- Results from other forms of validity analysis not compatible with above table format:
- Manual cites other published reliability studies:
- No
- Provide citations for additional published studies.
Bias Analysis
| Grade |
Kindergarten
|
|---|---|
| Rating | No |
- Have you conducted additional analyses related to the extent to which your tool is or is not biased against subgroups (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, students with disabilities, English language learners)? Examples might include Differential Item Functioning (DIF) or invariance testing in multiple-group confirmatory factor models.
- No
- If yes,
- a. Describe the method used to determine the presence or absence of bias:
- b. Describe the subgroups for which bias analyses were conducted:
- c. Describe the results of the bias analyses conducted, including data and interpretative statements. Include magnitude of effect (if available) if bias has been identified.
Data Collection Practices
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