1 Overview The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals®–Fourth Edition (CELF®–4) is an individually administered test for determin- ing if a student (ages 5 through 21 years) has a language disorder or delay. It is a revision of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Third Edition, published in 1995, and features updated norms, expanded. Celf–4 receptive language index The Receptive Language index is a cumulative measure of Matthew’s performance on two or three subtests designed to best probe receptive aspects of language including comprehension and listening. Information about the sensitivity of CELF–4 to the language impairments observed in specific clinical groups, refer to pages 273–275 in the CELF–4 Examiner’s Manual.The CELF-4 would be unofficially one of the most used language assessments for school aged children.

When writing reports for assessments, there are many objective and subjective measures that not even some speech pathologists fully understand. So lets go through some of the terminology.

Scaled scores: For each of the subtests, each student is given a scaled score. In order to allow comparison between students, raw scores (the scores that the student obtains) are generally converted (via math/stats equations) so that the average is 10 (on the CELF-4 and CELF-P2). But some students can get a bit above average, some a bit below average and that’s okay. This range of “a bit below and a bit above average” is the standard deviation which is 3. So if a student is assessed at a score of anywhere between 8-12, this is within average. Once you get to that 1st standard deviation, (ie. a score of 7, or a score 13), this is out of the average. I’ve seen a lot of reports that say that the average is between “7-13”, and I just can’t agree! You want to be within one standard deviation of the mean, not at one standard deviation.

Once the scaled scores of each subtest is added, you get another number. This number on the CELF-4 is also then scaled. This becomes the Language Index. Here, the average is 100, and the standard deviation is 15. So the “normal” range is 86-114. Again, you want to be within the average range.

Celf 4 Spanish Manual

StandardDeviation: The standard deviations can also refer to other scores and rankings. For example, in one standard deviation (or the “average range”) of the mean include roughly 68% of the sample. When you jump to the next standard deviation (ie. plus or minus 2 standard deviations), roughly 95% of the population is then included.

Percentile Rank: Take the percentile rank and put it into this sentence

“Johnny score’s were equal or above ___% of the aged-matched sample/population”

So if Johnny’s percentile rank was at 1%, then Johnny scored above only 1% of the people tested. This is a very low score and indicates that he is significantly delayed compared to his peers. On the other hand, if he had a score of 90%, then he scored equal or above 90% of people in his age-range. This is a very high score.

Celf 4 Manual Online

Describing severity: The CELF-4/CELF-P2 provides guidelines for the Language Index scores only. For the reports I write, I would use the guidelines (inclusive) as:

Celf 4 Scoring Manual

Standard Scores (SS) 115+ as Above Average
SS 86-114 as Average
SS 78 to 85 as Mildly Delayed
SS 71 to 77 as Moderately Delayed
SS 70 and below as Severely Delayed

I also tend to make up severity levels for the subtests, but these are NOT guidelines put out by the CELF assessments.

Celf 4 Manual Pdf

Confidence Level: I tend to rarely work out the confidence level, purely because I don’t need to for funding reports (and parents rarely care). But what is it? It describes how confident you are of getting a score if you repeated the same test over and over again. So if you come up with a Confidence Interval of 78 to 90 for a Confidence level of 90%, means that if you repeated the test over and over again, 90% of the scores would be between 78 and 90. Therefore, the higher the Confidence Level, the higher the range of scores.