Methodological Issues in Literacy Research Across Languages: Evidence From Alphabetic Orthographies

Résumé En

Research on literacy has become universal and is essential for researchers of various disciplines, educators, and psychologists. For this article, we examined the most important methodological challenges that arise when conducting literacy research across languages, some of which have long been acknowledged in the relevant literature. Specifically, we focused on challenges related to research on word reading, spelling, passage comprehension, and writing, ranging from the target skills, constructs, and assessment issues to the matching of the samples and measurement and factorial invariance issues. We conclude that although theoretical and applied issues have been addressed in the literature, to date, this has happened only with limited relevance for reading and writing research across languages. The discussion provides some relevant evidence from a neuroscience perspective to promote useful insights and greater methodological rigor in literacy research across languages. L iteracy research across languages is essential for researchers of various disciplines, educators, and psychologists. However, for the broad range of research to be informative and useful, the data collected in various languages have to be comparable (see Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2017). This comparability hinges on diverse issues, such as the definition of constructs (e.g., Olive, 2012), the precision of assessment and research methods (e.g., Caravolas, Lervåg, Defior, Seidlová Málková, & Hulme, 2013), the measurement and factorial invariance of the predictor and outcome measures (e.g., Papadopoulos, Kendeou, & Spanoudis, 2012), or even challenges at the level and complexity of statistical analysis and deriving conclusions (e.g., Aro & Wimmer, 2003). In the present article, we review some of the most relevant methodological issues involved in literacy research across languages and provide guidelines for addressing these issues. Literacy relates to reading, spelling, reading comprehension, and text composition. In learning to read and write, students learn to encode language into their writing system and decode printed words to speech to derive meaning (see Alves, Limpo, & Joshi, 2020). Much of the history of literacy research on European alphabets, 1 to which we restricted ourselves for the present review, shows that the field has been driven by data acquired in cross-linguistic studies. Cross-linguistic research focuses on the development of these fundamental literacy skills in different languages, varying primarily in orthographic consistency. It also investigates various relations among fundamental components, or precursor skills, and between literacy skills themselves. Most of the cross-linguistic