ARCS - The Adult Reading Components Study

Overview of the ARCS The Two ARCS Assessment Batteries ARCS Research Profiles The ARCS Relationship to this Website

The ARCS Relationship to this Website

Two groups of reading profiles are presented on this web site:

• 11 Comparison Profiles in the Match a Profile section
• 10 ARCS Research Profiles in the Mini-Course section

Since all the reading profiles are of ABE learners who took part in the ARCS, why does each section have a different set of reading profiles? The difference can be explained by two factors:

1. Purpose for constructing the profiles:

   Comparison Profiles: The purpose of this web site is to give information to teachers about learners in their classrooms. Learners in literacy centers are most often grouped by scores on reading comprehension tests. We wanted to present a realistic adult literacy classroom. Therefore, ARCS learners were first grouped according to their scores on silent reading comprehension, GE 9-12, 6-8, 3-5, and 0-2. Within each GE group, patterns of learners' scores on word recognition, spelling, and word meaning were compared and those most similar to each other were clustered into sub-groups we call Comparison Reading Profiles. There are 11 Comparison Reading Profiles, three each for GE 9-12, 6-8, 3-5, and two for GE 0-2 (divided by native language only).

   ARCS Research Profiles: The purpose of the ARCS is to describe the different patterns of reading skills among ABE learners. Learners were not grouped by Silent Reading Comprehension scores before their similarities on other reading components clustered them into Profiles; Although silent reading comprehension is an outcome of reading instruction, it is also a specific reading skill that affects progress on other reading skills such as word recognition and vocabulary. For the Research Profiles, silent reading comprehension takes the role of a variable. It is is one of the eleven reading skills tested by the ARCS. These are Profiles to describe the diversity of skills patterns found in the ABE population that was studied.

2. Number of reading components used to construct profiles

   Comparison Profiles: We limited the number of components we used to form the Comparison Profiles to those that a teacher would be able to test in a short time. We chose those that give a good picture of a learner's instructional needs and ones that can be remediated. We also considered the cost of materials to test some of the ARCS components.

   ARCS Research Profiles: ARCS participants are clustered according to similar performances on 11 assessments. ARCS researchers found 10 Profiles that discriminate groups of readers. Testing all of the components that we know affect reading outcomes serves the purpose of the ARCS - to describe the ABE readers.