Assessing assessment: the Goldman-Fristoe-Woodcock Auditory Skills Battery.

The purpose for this study was to determine the internal consistency (reliability) and the test-retest consistency (stability), and analyze the factor structures for the first ten tests of The Goldman-Fristoe-Woodcock Auditory Skills Battery (GFW Battery) in a population of normally hearing and regularly educated elementary children. The test battery was administered exactly as described in the test manuals to 100 children randomly selected from three public school districts. The results were that while the tests in the GFW Battery were typically reliable they were not stable. Additionally, the results indicated that factor structures suggested four distinct behaviors which conformed to auditory processing but which were significantly different than the factor structures reported for the GFW Battery. The first implication for clinicians is to retest children, after initial test administration, to ensure the stability of the initial test score. The second implication from this study is to question the validity of identifying each of the tests of the GFW Battery as unique and the validity for isolating the first 10 tests for planning and implementing auditory training.