CAN SELF-REPORT DATA ON DEFICITS IN READING AND SPELLING PREDICT SPELLING DISABILITY AS DEFINED BY PSYCHOMETRIC TESTS

Questionnaire data concerning spelling and reading self-assessment, ha bits, and school history were obtained for 79 adults (54 women and 25 men). The items were used to predict affectedness as defined on the ba sis of psychometric tests. For this purpose, two different discriminan t analytical approaches (linear discriminant analysis and hierarchical classification with CART) were compared using a cross-validation desi gn. 86.8-92.6% of the learning sample and 87.5-88% of the cross-valida tion sample were classified correctly. The CART model was preferred du e to a balanced relation of sensitivity and specificity. Our results s upport the conclusion that self-report data are appropriate to substit ute psychometric tests if these cannot be administered.