The long and arduous pre-production phase of the programmme's development involved countless hours of pounding hot computer keyboards to ensure that the final product would be both technically reliable and as accurate as possible in its diagnoses.

The Pico team is a group of highly dedicated individuals from a wide variety of professional backgrounds.

This is what they all did:

Dorota Zdzienski, who devised the programme, was awarded her PhD for her thesis on Dyslexia in Higher Education in 1999.

Michael Walker, her partner in the company has a long and successful background in banking management and has been a strong driving force behind the production team.

Lee Allane, author of several specialist books, turned his skills to the physical production of many of the items in the StudyScan battery of tests, and turned his logical and mathematical genius to working with ISL's programmers in creating StatScan, the results display, analysis and report generation package.

Steve Renow, whose own technical background is in broadcast television and corporate television production put together the outline and computer orientation for the programme. He also provides the continuing computer support and works with Lee and Dorota on the evaluation of data feedback for future development.

The team is also most grateful to a number of Educational Psychologists who provided inexhaustible advice on many aspects of assessment and statistical analysis.

To find out a little more about Pico Educational Systems' consultancy activity for Education Institutions and Local Authorities click this link. There is a StudyScan link there to bring you back when you've finished.

The Dis-Forum archive contains many interesting papers, discussion threads and comment on dyslexia.

In the light of the recent move to open up the assessment process to qualified Study Support Tutors the Pico Team recognised that there may be a need for professional indemnity and public liability insurance.

This thought was brought about by the model used for tecnical operators in the television industry. Steve, the Pico Team's technical chap enquired from the providers of his own insurance what might be done for specialists in the dyslexia field. Their response was simple:

'If enough people are interested we could probably put together a good package for around the £80 mark.'

If this would be of interest to you, contact Chris at Peter W. Edwards and Co. and let her know!

e-mail pweco@premier.co.uk

The research behind the latest version of The StudyScan Suite took over five years
and the final battery of tests has been
piloted with over two hundred students.

Results have been compared to the findings of Educational Psychologists using traditional methods and the match has been found to be around 95%

Introduction

The assessment of dyslexic adults in Higher Education (where there is a well documented history and previous assessment reports) is a fairly routine procedure, whereby even in the absence of any of the generally accepted traits of dyslexia - such as an 'ACID' profile (Thomson,1990), a discrepancy between verbal and non-verbal IQ, or 'an unusual balance of skills' (Gilroy,1991), the educational psychologist often has no qualms in up-dating a confirmation of dyslexia. The same is not true of a number of students who are being assessed for the first time in Higher Education - where they have a high level of ability and are well compensated in many areas, and where a full personal background is not available. Dyslexia can vary in severity from one individual to another (Turner, 1997) and can be compensated to varying levels (McLoughlin,Fitzgibbon & Young 1994).

With the recent move to open up the assessment process to qualified Study Support Tutors, the StudyScan programme may be a useful aid to institutions to serve as a) an effective and accessible large scale initial screener for dyslexia, and b) a cognitive and attainment test battery with a comprehensive diagnostic report which can act as a basis for the construction of individual training programmes.

Feasiblity

Little or no research has been carried out on computer-based diagnosis of dyslexic adults. Feasibility studies carried out in recent years (Nicolson, Fawcett, & Miles 1992) suggest that computer-based testing can be reliable and objective. Furthermore, in the case of specific memory tests, the multimedia version, carried out in identical fashion to the traditional method, was not only valid, but also significantly easier to administer (Nicolson, 1991).

This technological breakthrough provided researchers with the opportunity to construct a new generation of psychometric tests that would enable larger scale, and lower cost screening and assessment.

There are concerns which need to be considered, such as the need to ensure a continuation of human contact as part of a computer-based test, some students may find this medium discouraging and prefer to be tested by a tutor. There are inherent aspects in a computer programme that are not as flexible as might be desired and which can on occasion be irritating, and there needs to be continuing research carried out to ensure reliability and validity of diagnosis.

However, there have already been identified strengths which also need to be mentioned. Many students have reported that they consider the StudyScan programme to be user friendly, and state that they have enjoyed doing some of the tests, some feel that it is less daunting and embarrassing than being tested by another person, and students have found it quite challenging in parts. Tutors have found the learning styles profiles useful as a discussion document in subsequent sessions with their students, and have considered the content of the Analysis Report to be very detailed.

This programme is additionally a research tool and is breaking new ground.

Test Development

QuickScan was originally based on the BDA Adult Dyslexia Checklist, for research purposes, but it also extends to general study skills and individual learning styles. Pilot testing was carried out in 6th Form Colleges, and several universities with groups of confirmed dyslexic students and groups of non-dyslexic students. QuickScan was found to be reliable (R=0.9) and the results of the studies confirm that the analysis of the questionnaire data is capable of discriminating between dyslexic and non-dyslexic students (Zdzienski, in press).

In current use, QuickScan is proving a hit-rate of between 90-95%, allowing for a number of apparent false positives (not as yet confirmed since the students in this group have not been previously assessed), and some false negatives, mainly in cases of students with a history of dyslexia but who no longer appear to be experiencing too many difficulties (i.e. well compensated)

QuickScan has also been used with equal success rates in secondary schools for 16+ age group. However, it is not suitable in its present format for basic adult literacy.

StudyScan is a comprehensive adult cognitive and attainment test battery and has been piloted in three stages. The first stage formed the main part of a project on dyslexia in Higher Education (HEFCE 1994-1995), in which the SATA (Scholastic Abilities Test for Adults - Bryant, Patton & Dunn, 1991) was administered to UK students. The SATA was standardised on over 1000 examinees residing in 19 US States. The sample is claimed to be representative of the US population.

Coefficients for validity and reliability published in the manual are high. This test battery was adapted for use with UK students and re-normed for a study group of 2000 students mainly from two universities and from approximately 60 different subject areas. The group included 200 dyslexic students.

In the next stage the new test battery was piloted and tested for reliability against the SATA, and an item calibration in the construction of the new form of the test was carried out using Rasch analysis as described in Crocker & Algina (1986, 353-354), to allow a calculation of internal consistency together with the difficulty level of each item, standard error, assessment of the item put to the Rasch model and information provided. The initial pilot yielded reliabilities of around .8 for most of the tests and was an encouraging start. All suggestions for changes were implemented.

At the third stage, other specific tests which were considered essential for a dyslexia assessment but were not part of the SATA, have been trialled and included, such as speed of information processing, visual and auditory sequential memory and coding. Phonological skills tests (e.g. non-word reading, Snowling, Strothard & McLean, 1996) has been administered to students in the second (more recent) stage of the study, but did not present difficulties except to those with a more severe form of dyslexia, or unfamiliarity with English. Other phonological skills tests which were not generally available at the time of the Dyslexia project should be considered as one of the priorities in the future development of the programme.

Early results from users, (from whose data further statistical analyses will be carried out) indicate an over 90% match between the StudyScan reports and their equivalent Educational Psychologists’ assessments. Some Colleges of Further Education have found the tests too difficult for their students, whilst others are reporting that they can see this will be a useful resource for their college.

Future Research

A development programme is in place for a much larger statistical analysis to be carried out with a number of institutions, so that further minor amendments can be made allowing for increasing levels of reliability, for a series of validity studies to be conducted, and changes to the presentation of the programme to be considered in response to feed-back from users.

Dorota Zdzienski
References

Bryant,B.R., Patton,J.R., & Dunn,C. (1991) SATA (Scholastic Abilities Test for Adults).Examiner’s Manual. Pro-ed. Austin, Texas.
Crocker,L.,& Algina,J. (1986) Introduction to Classical and Modern Theory. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc.
Gilroy,D. (Ed) (1991) Dyslexia and Higher education. Advice on Dyslexia in H.E. Bangor, N.Wales Publication.
HEFCE (1995) Report on the 1993-94 Special Initiative to Encourage Widening Participation for Students with Special Needs. p.32. HEFCE Publications, Bristol.
McLoughlin,D.,Fitzgibbon,G.,& Young,V. 1994 Adult Dyslexia: Assessment, Counselling and Training. London: Whurr.
Nicolson,R.I. (1991) Hypermedia: An enabling technology for empirical psychology. LRG 6/90. Learning Research Group. University of Sheffield.
Nicolson,R.I.,Fawcett,A.J.,& Miles,T.R. (1992) Adult Dyslexia Screening Feasibility Study. L. G92/19, Learning Research Group, University of Sheffield
Snowling,M.,Strothard,S.,& McLean,J. (1996) The Non-Word De-Coding Test, Thames Valley Test Company.
Thomson,M.E. (1990) Developmental Dyslexia. London: Whurr.
Turner,M. (1997) Psychological Assessment of Dyslexia. London: Whurr.
Zdzienski,D. (in press) Identifying SpLD/Dyslexia in Higher & Futher Education: Developing QuickScan (part of The StudyScan Suite), an IT approach to Learning Styles. In Hunter-Carsch,M.,& Herrington,M.,(Eds) Dyslexia and Effective Learning. London: Whurr.