Evidence to support test interpretation: Evaluating the content validity of a new item set for the Transition Pragmatics Interview.
Gerard H Poll, Madison Mayes, Janis Petru
PMID 38343131WHAT IT FOUND
Twenty-three of twenty-five new items on the Transition Pragmatics Interview were found to be relevant and understandable to adolescents.
Two items involving gender pay and corporate bias were flagged as potentially distracting, so they were edited to better reflect social communication ability.
Key findings
01Expert review and adolescent cognitive interviews converged on 23 of 25 new items being relevant to social communication constructs and free of construct-irrelevant factors.
02Two items (ES5 and CS1) were identified as problematic because their content regarding gender pay equity and a specific retail store could distract examinees or introduce bias unrelated to their social communication skills.
03The study provides a transparent model for evaluating content validity, demonstrating that only 92% of items need to meet relevance and comprehensibility standards to be considered sufficient under COSMIN guidelines.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study did not evaluate all elements of content validity, such as the relevance of items for the specific context of selecting intervention goals. The expert panel consisted solely of SLPs, lacking input from other disciplines involved in adolescent transition. The sample of adolescents was small (n=7), which limits the generalizability of the comprehensibility findings. The study reports on the revision of items based on these findings, but does not provide data on the psychometric performance of the final revised set.
Declared interests
The authors report no declarations of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the TPI is now a fully validated diagnostic or goal-setting tool. This study only confirmed the content validity of 25 new items; it did not establish the test's structural validity, internal consistency, or clinical utility for identifying intervention goals, which are the next steps in development.