Sensitivity of narrative organization measures using narrative retells produced by young school-age children

Analysis of children's productions of oral narratives provides a rich description of children's oral language skills. However, measures of narrative organization can be directly affected by both developmental and task-based performance constraints which can make a measure insensitive and inappropriate for a particular population and/or sampling method. This study critically reviewed four methods of evaluating children's narrative organization skills and revealed that the Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS) was the most developmentally sensitive measure for a group of 129 5-7-year-old children who completed a narrative retell. Upon comparing the methods of assessing narrative organization skills, the NSS was unique in its incorporation of higher-level narrative features and its scoring rules, which required examiners to make subjective judgments across seven aspects of the narrative process. The discussion surrounded issues of measuring children's narrative organization skills and, more broadly, issues surrounding sensitivity of criterion referenced assessment measures.