(TOPS-3:E) Test of Problem Solving-3:Elementary

Test Purpose

The TOPS 3 Elementary assesses a school-aged child's ability to integrate semantic and linguistic knowledge with reasoning ability by way of picture stimuli and verbal responses.

Test Description

TOPS 3 Elementary focuses on the student's linguistic ability to think and reason.  Language competence is the overall indicator of how a child's language skills affect his ability to think, reason, problem solve, infer, classify, associate, predict, determine causes, sequence, and understand directions.  The TOPS 3 Elementary test questions focus on a broad range of language-based thinking skills, including clarifying, analyzing, generating solutions, evaluating, and affective thinking.

While other tests may assess students' thinking skills by tapping mathematical, spatial, or nonverbal potential, the TOPS 3 Elementary measures discrete skills that form the foundation of language-based thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving abilities.

The test is composed of 18 situations that examine six thinking tasks.  Carefully selected items and situations are relevant to most students and common across cultures and in most schools or home settings.

Although the skills tested on the TOPS 3 Elementary are necessary for developing social competence, it is not primarily a test of pragmatic or social language skills.  Rather, it should be part of a battery of tests/observations used to assess pragmatic competence.

Subtests

The subtests consist of full-color photographs and questions that address critical thinking skills:

• Subtest A: Making Inferences

The student gives a logical explanation about a situation combining what he knows or can see with previous experiences and background information.  The ability to infer is critical for success in the classroom, academics, and social development.

• Subtest B: Sequencing

The student determines and explains logical, everyday sequences of events.  This skill is critical to academic performance and requires an understanding of the situation, determining the logical sequence of events, and expressing it clearly.

• Subtest C: Negative Questions

The student is asked to explain why something would not occur or why one shouldn't take a given action in a situation.  Responses reveal how well your student notices, attends to, understands, and expresses an appropriate response on this subtest.

• Subtest D: Problem Solving

The student must recognize the problem, think of alternative solutions, evaluate the options, and state an appropriate solution that will work well.  It also includes how to avoid specific problems.

• Subtest E: Predicting

This subtest requires the student to anticipate what will happen in the future.  This requires him to draw from past experiences to reflect on the future.  This skill is an academic as well as a life skill.

• Subtest F: Determining Causes

The student must give a logical reason for a given aspect of the situation in the paragraph.  To be successful, the student must see the relationship between the action and the outcome.

• Examiner Qualifications

The test should only be administered by a trained professional familiar with language disorders (e.g., speech-language pathologist, psychologist).

Test Procedures

• All items are presented in a conversational style with normal intonation and speaking rate.
• The student looks at a picture in the Picture Stimuli Book and answers questions (presented verbally by the examiner) about the picture.
• Each task is presented in its entirety to every student. Basals and ceilings are not used in the TOPS 3 Elementary.  Prompts on the test form are allowed only if the student's response is unclear to the examiner.  It is not used to give the student a "second chance" after a clear, complete but incorrect response.
• Acceptable responses for each test item are indicated on the test form.

Discussion of Performance

The Discussion of Performance section in the Examiner's Manual was developed to guide the examiner to make appropriate and educationally-relevant recommendations for remediation based on a clear understanding of each subtest.

It includes a research-based rationale for the importance of teaching thinking skills, clinically sound information about each task, what is required for the student to be successful, how the task relates to academic and classroom behavior, the specific steps a student goes through to complete each thinking task, and the breakdown of what the student's responses reflect about his thinking skills

Standardization/Statistics

Two studies were conducted on the TOPS 3 Elementary – the item pool and standardization studies.  The item pool study consisted of 690 subjects and the standardization study consisted of 1,406 subjects.  The subjects in both studies represented the latest National Census for race, gender, age, and educational placement.  This included subjects with IEPs for special services but who attend regular education classes.

• Reliability—established by the use of the following for all subtests and the total test at all age levels:
  • SEM
  • Inter-Rater Reliability
  • Test-Retest
  • Reliability Based on Item Homogeneity (KR20)

The test-retest coefficient is .84 for the total test, the SEM is 9.88 for the total test.  Based on these tests, the TOPS 3 Elementary has satisfactory levels of reliability for all tasks and the total test at all age levels.

• Validity—established by the use of construct and contrasted group validity.
  • Contrast Groups (t-values): Test discriminates between subjects with normal language development and subjects with language disorders.
  • Point Biserial Correlations
  • Subtest Intercorrelations
  • Correlations Between Subtests and Total Test

The t-Values for differences between normal and language-disordered subjects were significant at the .01 level for five age levels and at the .05 level for two age levels.  The TOPS 3 Elementary clearly discriminates between these groups.  Inspection of all the biserial correlations reveals acceptable levels of item consistency with 85% of the individual items showing statistically significant pass/fail correlations with the task scores.

• Race/Socioeconomic Group Difference Analyses—conducted at the item and subtest/task levels.  The analysis of performance differences among race/socioeconomic groups was conducted at the subtest/task levels.
  • Z-tests Chi Square analysis at the subtest level
  • Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) F-tests

Of the more than 2,000 z-tests, only a small percentage showed any racial differences.  Percentages ranged from below 1% to 6%.  These low percentages indicate that neither race or SES are strong factors on the TOPS 3 Elementary.

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