A Morphological Awareness Test (PCM): Contribution to its validation

Abstract

The relationship between phonological awareness and morphological awareness and the independent contribution of each one for reading achievement has been an issue of debate in the literature. Some authors argue that morphological awareness does not contribute independently of phonological awareness for learning to read. Others found evidence to suggest that morphological awareness has a specific role in the reading acquisition process. Nevertheless, studies results’ are fragile, as there is no possibility to compare them, due to the too wide range of assessment tasks. Another factor concurring to the fragility of the results presented so far in the literature is the lack of validity and reliability studies regarding the assessment tasks. This study presents an analysis of the psychometric properties of the PCM – Morphological Awareness Test. We assessed 243 children attending the 2nd (n = 79), the 3rd (n = 83) and the 4th (n = 81) grades in public urban schools in Porto (city in the north of Portugal). Results indicate that the PCM has a high internal consistency (α = .95). In the factor analysis a single factor was extracted with eigenvalue equal to 10.88, which explains 54.42 % of the total variance of the results. The items are all saturated in the factor, with values ranging from a minimum of .42 to a maximum of .91.Keywords: morphological awareness, metalinguistic assessment, morphology.