Psihološka Obzorja (Dec 2020)
Psychometric characteristics of the Slovene translation of the Gifted Rating Scales (GRS-S)
Abstract
The importance of individualized work with gifted students has been acknowledged in both domestic and international environments, and the process of gifted student identification is a professionally demanding one. The Slovene Concept of Identifying and Working with Gifted Students, which has been internationally cited as an example of good practice, is currently being renewed. Psychologists should simultaneously secure methodologically sound instruments for the teachers to assess giftedness in students, as they are indispensable in identifying the gifted in educational settings. In the present article, we describe the process of translation and adaptation of the Gifted Rating Scales GRS-S (Pfeiffer & Jarosewich, 2003) into Slovene. The scales could be used by teachers and other mentors to assess their students’ potentials and abilities in areas of intellectual and academic ability, creativity, artistic talent, leadership, and motivation. We looked into the psychometric characteristics of the scales, gathered the raters’ comments about them, and conducted a convergent validity analysis with the currently used Scales for the Teacher’s Assessment of Giftedness (OLNAD07). Thirty-six teachers from around Slovenia participated in the study and rated the giftedness of 175 4th grade students. The translated scales exhibit good psychometric characteristics (high internal consistency, criterion validity, factorial structure) and satisfactory convergent validity with OLNAD07. While the participating teachers are in general wary of the present instrument, they feel the proposed GRS-S scales are more suitable for use in the identification process. We thus propose a standardization study to be conducted with a larger sample and we propose the possibility of implementing the scales into the process of working with the gifted in Slovenia.
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