The Psychometric Properties of the Hispanic Bilingual Gifted Screening Instrument (HBGSI)

Abstract

The psychometric properties of the Hispanic Bilingual Gifted Screening Instrument (HBGSI) were investigated in this study. The participants in the study were a part of a large 4-year longitudinal randomized study titled English Language and Literacy Acquisition (Project ELLA), which focused on an urban school district located in. The purpose of this study was to investigate (a) the inter-rater reliability of HBGSI data for Hispanic students over a 4-year period of time; (b) the concurrent validity of the HBGSI and the WLPB-R Verbal Analogies subtests measured at the kindergarten level; (c) what clusters best predicted the NNAT over a 4-year period (K-3); and (d) what clusters best predicted the WLPB-R Verbal Analogies subtest at the kindergarten level in English and Spanish. Results demonstrated further validation of the psychometric properties of the HBGSI. The HBGSI was found to have an inter-rater reliability throughout the 4-year ELLA study. It was also found in this study that five HBGSI clusters significantly predicted the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT), seven HBGSI clusters were found to significantly predict the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised (WLPB-R) Verbal Analogies subtest in English, and one HBGSI cluster significantly predicted the Spanish version of the WLPB-R Verbal Analogies subtest. Results further showed a fairly high concurrent validity between the HBGSI and the WLPB-R Verbal Analogies subtests in English, and a high concurrent validity between the HBGSI and the WLPB-R Verbal Analogies subtests in Spanish. Overall, this study further validated that the HBGSI holds promise in screening potential Hispanic gifted and talented students in the elementary grades.