Design and preliminary validation of a comprehensive Azerbaijani-Turkish language development test (ATLDT) for children aged 3-7 years: A methodological study.

Currently, no comprehensive language development test exists for Azerbaijani-Turkish, a widely spoken Turkic language in Iran. This study describes the development and initial content and face validation of the first Azerbaijani-Turkish Language Development Test (ATLDT) designed for children aged 3 to 7 years. The ATLDT is introduced as a preliminary instrument that requires further psychometric evaluation before any clinical application. A methodological design was employed, combining expert consultation and pilot testing. Qualitative data from expert feedback and examiner observations were used to refine items and support quantitative findings. The study was carried out in five phases: literature review, design of nine subtests, generation of an initial item pool, content validity assessment by ten experts using the Content Validity Ratio (CVR, with a minimum acceptable value of 0.62), and face validity evaluation through a pilot study with twenty children. The nine subtests assessed auditory discrimination, syntactic comprehension, derivational morphology, grammatical judgment, grammatical correc tion, verb conjugation, sentence repetition, nonword repetition, and word definition. From an initial pool of 145 items, those with CVR values below 0.62 were removed, and ten items were revised after piloting. The final test consisted of 105 items, with mean CVR values across subtests ranging from 0.80 to 1.00. Although the ATLDT demonstrated adequate content and face validity in this small sample, it remains an experimental prototype. Reliability, construct validity, discriminative validity, and normative data have not yet been established, and further research is essential before clinical use.