Abstract
The Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) has been used in large studies such as the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). Important conclusions might be done regarding its reliability for the prediction of children’s school readiness taking advantage of such large-scale evaluation. Although BSRA has being largely used, few are the studies at item-level under latent approach investigating its psychometric features. Using data from 14,899 2–3-year olds who participated in the MCS, we used Bayesian confirmatory factor analysis to examine multidimensionality of the subtests of the BSRA and their consistencies, specificities, and reliabilities. We found clear indications of multidimensionality. From the 88 items, 10 showed low reliability. Future research may consider excluding these low reliability items to improve the psychometric properties of the BSRA and its use as multidimensional measurement tool.
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Data availability
The data used in this investigation are available at https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/help/get-in-touch. More information about the Millennium Cohort Study can be found at https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls-studies/millennium-cohort-study/
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Funding
We would like to thank FAPESP (Sao Paulo Research Foundation, SPRINT Process 2016/50195-0) and the CAPES Thesis Award (N° 0374/2016. Process N° 23038.009191/2013-76).
This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001.
HCM would like to express his gratitude to the Senior Researcher CAPES-Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doc Fellowship (Process number 88881.145593/2017-01).
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DAM, PMMO, and HCM prepared the manuscript. DAM reviewed the literature. DAM and HCM carried out the analyses. SP, ME, and HCM conduct the analyses and its theoretical aspects in the discussion. TL is a specialist in school readiness and added knowledge in the background and methods. MLP and GP contributed with the revision of the paper and theoretical aspects in the discussion. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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De Almeida Maia, D., Pohl, S., Okuda, P.M.M. et al. Psychometric properties and optimizing of the Bracken School Readiness Assessment. Educ Asse Eval Acc 34, 227–239 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-020-09339-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-020-09339-3