NEALE ANALYSIS OF READING-ABILITY REVISED - SYSTEMATICALLY BIASED

The aim of this study was to assess the claims by Stothard & Hulme (19 91) that the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability Revised is systematical ly biased against boys, suffers from an inappropriate gradation in que stion difficulty in the comprehension subtest of Form 2 of the test an d that as a consequence, Form 1 and Form 2 of the test are not paralle l. A stratified random sampling procedure based on socio-economic stat us of schools in Victoria, Australia, was used to select 250 children who were administered both forms of the test. The results suggest that girls and boys do not differ significantly at different age levels in Accuracy or Comprehension scores on either form of the test. Mean Com prehension scores for passages 5 and 6 of Form 2 of the Australian edi tion of the test were in the expected direction for both boys and girl s, supporting the test's assertion regarding the item difficulty for e ach passage. Further reliability data are provided to support the equi valence of the norms for each form claimed by the test manual. In summ ary no evidence has been found in these data to support the claims of Stothard & Hulme.