Adapting Reading Measures From English to Meetei Mayek: An Exploratory Item Response Theory Approach

Abstract

The main aim of this adaptation study was to construct measures of word reading and related skills in Meetei Mayek, a written script of the common language of Manipur in northeast India. Seven widely used measures in English for assessing phonological processing, word reading, and vocabulary were adapted into Meetei Mayek. The English and Meetei Mayek measures were administered to 113 bilingual and biliterate students of Grades 1–6 attending schools in Manipur. Bayesian and Mokken item response analyses were conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the measures. Results indicated unidimensionality of the adapted Meetei Mayek reading measures except for the receptive vocabulary task. All but the Meetei Mayek sight word reading task showed the best model fit with difficulty and discrimination item parameters. An exploratory network analysis showed that vocabulary measures across the two languages shared strong positive links, and inconclusive evidence for some of the constructs can inform new testable hypotheses for different grades.