| During this research study the Self-Advocacy Assessment Tool for Preschool-Aged Children with Hearing Loss: Birth to Age 4 was developed, constructed, and evaluated. The study provides content, construct and internal consistency reliability and validity evidence. The Self-Advocacy Assessment Tool is the first tool specifically designed to assess self-advocacy development in preschool-aged children with hearing loss from birth to age four. The research conducted in this study is foundational, as no previous effort to formally measure self-advocacy development in preschool-aged children with hearing loss has been attempted in the research.;There were 5 major phases to this study. During Phase I, 7 preliminary qualitative interviews were conducted with experts in the field of deaf and hard of hearing education; additionally a thorough examination of the research with respect to self-advocacy development in preschool-aged children and a review of existing self-advocacy and child development checklists was performed. Phase II involved the creation of a 53-item self-advocacy assessment tool based on Phase I.;In Phase III, the instrument was distributed province wide through an early intervention program for children with hearing loss in Ontario, Canada. One hundred and six students were assessed using the initial self-advocacy tool; 84 of those students were assessed by two raters (a parent/guardian and a teacher). The purpose of using two raters where possible was to measure the inter-rater reliability of the assessment tool. In Phase IV, a total of 190 checklists were collected and analyzed using statistical analysis including descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha, and generalizability (G-) theory analysis. Results from the analysis produced a final 51-item tool measuring self-advocacy development in infants (0-18 months), toddlers (18 -30 months) and preschool-aged (30- 48 months) children.;Results demonstrated items in the self-advocacy assessment tool aligned with four components (knowledge of self, knowledge of rights, communication and leadership) of an existing self-advocacy framework, which speaks to content validity of the tool. Results also indicated that the developed tool yielded a strong internal consistency and reliability rating (.948) using Cronbach alpha analysis. A G-theory p x q x r' (person-by-question-by-rating) fully crossed random effects analysis was performed to assess inter-rater variability. A G-coefficient of .94 suggested that the developed tool yielded a very strong inter-rater reliability when students were assessed by two raters.;In Phase V, a 51-item tool was finalized and distributed to three teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing for post analysis. The feedback gathered confirmed the efficacy of the tool and the accuracy of the items distributed by age categories aforementioned. The results, limitations, and implications for leadership, policy, educators, and parents are discussed. |
