Objectives. This study aims at constructing and validating an assessment tool—the Cantonese Basic Speech Perception Test (CBSPT)—for measuring the basic speech perception ability of Cantonese-speaking children.; Methods and results. There were five distinguishable phases in the development of CBSPT. Phase I was to determine an overall test structure through a review of literature, expert consultation and an exploratory study of Cantonese tone perception. A blueprint of the test, including three domains and 16 test facets, was formed. Phase II was to construct test items under each facet. A survey of children's vocabulary provided a bank of over 1000 words, from which 164 items were carefully constructed and were subsequently further reduced to 147 items in the Phase III pilot study. Phase IV, the field test, involved a large-scale data collection whereby the resultant 147 items were tested on 140 normal-hearing and 83 hearing-impaired children.; The last phase of test validation was psychometric evaluations, which included reliability and validity assessments on the data obtained from the field administration. Reliability as estimated by the internal consistency Cronbach's alphas fell in the acceptable range. Intra- and inter-rater reliability was also good as indicated by the high intra-class correlation coefficients of .90 or above in over 90% of the facets. High content validity was evident by expert ratings of ‘good’ to ‘very good’ on 98% of the items. The structure of the instrument was supported by correlational analyses, Rasch model and confirmatory factor analysis, which taken together provided satisfactory evidence for the construct validity of CBSPT. The first two types of analyses led to the removal of nine poorly constructed items.; Conclusions. The objective of constructing a reliable and valid assessment tool for measuring basic speech perception ability of Cantonese-speaking children has been achieved through detailed planning, implementation and analyses. CBSPT has the potential to contribute towards performing various important clinical functions including: (1) early identification of children with hearing impairment, (2) predicting performance for hearing-impaired children, (3) assessing the functional benefit of hearing devices, (4) assessing cochlear implant candidacy, (5) setting objectives for auditory training, and (6) monitoring the developmental progress of a child's speech perception ability. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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