PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED IN TEST CONSTRUCTION

Problems peculiar to India and mainly reflecting her social, linguistic and economic diversity were en­ countered during construction of the IPPT.

Developing a culture-specific test :

The complex sociocultural and linguistic features of India’s widely disparate socioeconomic groups need to be considered and makes development of a test more formidable than in the West. Only those items familiar to all socioeconomic groups were selected for the IPPT. Pilot studies and item analysis particu­ larly item bias helped this endeavour.

Often rural children took much longer to respond to the IPPT test items when compared to advantaged children. This was also reported by Satyanath and Satyanath (1990) while testing rural and urban chil­ dren from Madhya Pradesh on a language test.

Sampling :

Sampling presented several difficulties.

Sample representativeness;

For a sample to be truly representative it must depict the variability of a society proportionately. How­ ever, subgroup composition varies in different districts. To overcome this dilemma an equal proportion of children were selected from each social class.

Definition of social class

This was challenging in the face of the diverse living standards and styles, quality of education and occupation in cities, towns and villages. Family income was difficult to pinpoint due to reluctance to reveal revenue, presence of multiple earning members, varying family size and joint family systems. The Market Research Society classification (MRS) was employed as it did not consider family income or specific lifestyles. MRS is based on the level of education and type of occupation of the head of the family, usually the father. Tripathi (1982) and Chatterjee (1982) have also noted that a linear relationship between socioeconomic class and psychological behaviour under study cannot be assumed and may cause erro­ neous conclusions. They concur that defining social class is difficult in India and conclude that the method used to define it influences the results.

Lack of a postal address and birth records:

Most disadvantaged families do not have a postal address. Thus random selection was achieved through enrollment registers in Anganwadi centres in the urban slums. Anganwadi centres are part of the ICDS

project - an intervention programme for disadvantaged children aged less than six years. Since they register all slum children in the vicinity, the selection was truly random.

ICDS does not cover the total number of villages of the Kota district hence all of them were enlisted and randomly selected for the study. All non disabled children in the enrolled villages were tested.

Birth records are rarely maintained by the disadvantaged families. Historical events like monsoons, festivals and harvest time that can be time locked to a child’s date of birth were used to deduce the age when necessary.

The above measures provide a practical way of combating the various problems encountered.

Standardisation :

The test responses in sections on verbal ability were vastly different in the three socioeconomic sub­ groups. Average scores varied significantly and distribution curves were greatly skewed in the deprived

populations dictating a need for separate norms for each socioeconomic group.

Multiple languages and bilingualism :

India has over 300 languages and dialects. As Shrivastav (1980) had noted no state is monolingual and at least three languages are used in each. Children tested in an unfamiliar language may make semantic mismatches (Massey et al 1982). These mismatches occur because of higher anxiety levels in children who then fail to respond (Ben-Zeev 1977) and as a result of misinterpretation of responses by the tester.

Many upper class children in Kota studying in English medium nurseries insisted on answering in English inspite of the fact that they were requested to speak in any language they felt comfortable with and the tester spoke in Hindi. Presumably, they associated the author (tester) with their teachers who conduct lessons in English . Noun labels were often incorrect in English but correct in Hindi, when the latter was coaxed out of them. Fantini (1978) also noted that bilingual children were sensitive to their interlocutors and rigidly used the language they associated with the speaker.

Another problem encountered in the Kota study was common usage of some terms. For example, the Hadoti term ‘log’ is commonly used to denote man, woman, girl, or boy. The IPPT considers such a response a level lower than the more specific term. The relative importance of a word in a cultural subgroup decides when it will develop and how it will be used has previously been noted by Miller (1978), Howlin and Rutter (1987) and Halliday (1975) respectively.

Most children spoke Hindi and Hadoti, the dominant languages/dialects of the region. However there were some children who spoke and understood only their mother tongue. These were usually the very young children from deprived groups. Some shy children would not respond to Hindi if it was their second language. This reiuctance faded once the mother tongue was used.

The phenomenon of ‘mixing’ was seen in all social groups but more so in older upper class children, between their mother tongue and Hindi or occasionally English. Apparently the language used in the test situation was of significance. Miller (1978) advocated the study of a child’s sociolinguistic background to select the most appropriate language for the test. He recommended assessment of ‘collective compe­ tence’ using a mixture of languages. Although, the response given must be equivalent to that expected for the original term. This may be difficult as structural or semantic equivalence between languages need not be synonymous. Therefore, order of acquisition of those structures or meanings may not be equal. Despite the difficulties envisaged in assessing collective competence of a child, it seems a reasonable solution to multitudinous dilemmas in testing of bilingual children.

Some problems with multiple languages in a test situation encountered in the Kota study were mitigated using the following techniques.

1. A list of the verbal labels was made in the major languages - Gujrati, Marathi, Malyalum, Tamil,

Bengali.

2. The parent, grandparent or a community worker was instructed simultaneously as an interpreter. 3. The child’s responses were recorded verbatim and cross checked later with a more objective native language speaker.

4. The questions the assessor had to ask were simple and the tester learnt their Hadoti translations as this was the major local dialect.

Interpreters were sometimes eager for a particular child to do well and would translate an incorrect verbal label correctly. This was countered by having two or three interpreters available, made possible as a small crowd always gathered at the testing site and most communities living together had a common mother tongue. Local interpreters are useful but need to be contained and instructed properly to avoid biased results. Technique 3 is an important way to achieve a reasonable balance in such situations.

Cross checking responses with master charts of correct terms in a language is practical in the field. The advantage of the IPPT is that the section on comprehension does not involve long complex sentences. Technique 4 is simple for professional testers to undertake when working clinically or doing research in a region.

The general approach was flexible with an objective of communicating the task to a child. If necessary, more than one language was used.

Problems in the field :

Many logistic problems were confronted in the field. To administer the test without disturbance was almost impossible. The novelty of a car, of persons who were overtly different from the villagers and of the test situation attracted large crowds who milled around the testing site (photo on pg...). It was very difficult to explain the need of seclusion and quiet. Anandalakshmy (1982) described similar problems encountered in such studies. He suggested involving a team of field workers who could help in distracting and organising the crowds. He noted that high motivation, respect for the individuals and culture under study, understanding the human psyche and ingenuity were major factors in gathering reliable data. Tripathi (1982) cautioned that ‘dress, diction and deportment’ of the investigator, which was usually different from that of the respondents, often inhibited them.

In Kota, rapport was built with the community leaders and parents by talking in their mother tongue and using inducements like free medical examinations, cold-drinks for parents and biscuits for children. These also acted as distraction tactics. Information on early development, age-appropriate play and toys at­

tracted upper and middle class parents. Henning (1987) has also suggested use of incentives to

promote cooperation from the respondents.

Many problems encountered with this study could occur in any Third-World research and solu­ tions employed here may be applicable to them.

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