Phoneme Segmentation Fluency

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Description of Measure

The DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) measure is a standardized, individually administered test of phonological awareness (Kaminski & Good, 1996). The PSF measure assesses a student's ability to segment three- and four-phoneme words into their individual phonemes fluently. The PSF measure has been found to be a good predictor of later reading achievement (Kaminski & Good, 1996). The PSF task is administered by the examiner orally presenting words of three to four phonemes. It requires the student to produce verbally the individual phonemes for each word. For example, the examiner says "sat," and the student says "/s/ /a/ /t/" to receive three possible points for the word. After the student responds, the examiner presents the next word, and the number of correct phonemes produced in one minute determines the final score. The PSF measure takes about 2 minutes to administer and has over 20 alternate forms for monitoring progress.

PSF is a measure that assess phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words. It is essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system. To learn more about phonemes, phonemic awareness, and how to design and implement effective phonemic awareness instruction, visit the Big Ideas in Beginning Reading Phonemic Awareness pages.

Recommended Administration Periods

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency is given in Winter and Spring of Kindergarten, and Fall, Winter, and Spring of First Grade.

Technical Adequacy Information

The two-week, alternate-form reliability for the PSF measure is .88 (Kaminski & Good, 1996), and the one-month, alternate-form reliability is .79 in May of kindergarten (Good et al., in preparation). Concurrent criterion validity of PSF is .54 with the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery Readiness Cluster score in spring of kindergarten (Good et al., in preparation). The predictive validity of spring-of-kindergarten PSF with (a) winter-of-first-grade DIBELS NWF is .62, (b) spring-of-first-grade Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery total Reading Cluster score is .68, and (c) spring-of-first-grade CBM ORF is .62 (Good et al., in preparation).

Resource Links

The following resources are available for this measure:

	DIBELS Administration and Scoring Guide: For complete administration and scoring with more examples than are available in the tutorial.
	Online Tutorial: For administration and scoring directions online with video and audio clips.
	Benchmark Booklets: For the complete set of DIBELS measures administered across a school year.
	Progress monitoring / alternate forms: For a complete booklet of all 20 alternate forms of the measure for regular progress monitoring.
	Big Ideas in Beginning Reading: Learn more about phonemic awareness.

This research is supported, in part, by the Early Childhood Research Institute on Measuring Growth and Development (H180M10006) funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Special Education Programs.