Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Department
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
The Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS) for language impairment was designed and normed for children of diverse backgrounds. This study examined the utility of the QUILS in a diverse school district by comparing failure rates across five elementary schools. Schools varied in racial composition (non-White range: 20.45 – 80%) and socioeconomic status (free/reduced lunch qualified range: 35.35 – 100%). Among 321 currently-enrolled kindergartners, 272 completed the QUILS. Using author recommendations for kindergarten-aged cutoff scores, the district-wide screening failure rate for primarily monolingual English speakers (n = 212; via parent questionnaire) was 16.51% (range: 7.69 – 34.29% per school). Failure rates were not independent of school (χ2(1, N = 5) = 16.92, p < .01). Individual school QUILS failure rates significantly correlated with the percent non-White student population of the school (r = .94; p < .01) and the percentage of the school that qualified for free/reduced lunch (r = .84; p < .05).
Advisor(s) or Committee Chair
Brian Weiler, Ph.D, CCC-SLP
Disciplines
Communication Sciences and Disorders | Education | Speech Pathology and Audiology
Recommended Citation
Lackey, Baylee, "A Study of Kindergarten Language Screening Performance Across Schools with Variable Demographic Compositions" (2020). Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects. Paper 878.
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses/878