Reliability and validity of the adult reading history questionnaire

The reliability and validity of a revised version of Finucci's (1982) Readi ng History Questionnaire was examined in two adult samples. One sample incl uded 84 adults from an ongoing study of familial dyslexia, and a second sam ple was composed of parents of 107 children from a longitudinal study of re ading development. Internal consistency was demonstrated by Cronbach's alph as of .94 and .92 in the two samples. Test-retest reliability was demonstra ted by significant correlations (.87 and .84 in the two samples) over sever al years between an earlier and revised form of the questionnaire. Validity was demonstrated via (a) correlations between the questionnaire score and reading measures (rs = .57-.70), (b) the results of a discriminant function analysis that used questionnaire scores to predict reading disability diag nosis, and (c) the finding that the questionnaire had substantial increment al validity in predicting reading skill in a hierarchical regression analys is that first entered IQ and SES. These results indicated that the question naire is both reliable and valid.