A Critical Analysis of Eight Informal Reading Inventories, from The Reading Teacher

This post was originally published here...

While not technically a research article I suppose, I thought Nina L. Nilsson piece in April 08 issue of The Reading Teacher was useful and interesting. Nilsson compares eight IRIs on a variety of issues and discusses aspects of their validity.

The eight tests she looks at are:

• Analytical Reading Inventory (ARI; Woods & Moe, 2007)


• Bader Reading and Language Inventory (BRLI; Bader, 2005)


• Basic Reading Inventory (BRI; Johns, 2005)


• Classroom Reading Inventory (CRI-SW; Silvaroli & Wheelock, 2004)


• Comprehensive Reading Inventory (CRI-CFC; Cooter, Flynt, & Cooter, 2007)


• Informal Reading Inventory (IRI-BR; Burns & Roe, 2007)


• Qualitative Reading Inventory-4 (QRI-4; Leslie & Caldwell, 2006)


• The Critical Reading Inventory (CRI-2; Applegate, Quinn, & Applegate, 2008).

She concludes with a section on picking a test to use.