The Development and Initial Validation of O-WSVLT, a Meaning-Recall Online L2 Spanish Vocabulary Levels Test

Recent literature in the field of L2 vocabulary assessment has advocated for the development of written receptive vocabulary tests such as Vocabulary Levels Tests (VLTs) that use: (a) meaning-recall item formats, (b) a minimum of 40 item counts per 1,000-frequency band to improve level estimates, and (c) lemmas (not word-families) as the lexical unit. With such recommendations in mind, this study presents the development and initial validation of Online written meaning-recall Spanish Vocabulary Levels Test (O-WSVLT), the first 120-item meaning-recall vocabulary levels test that measures knowledge of the 3,000 most frequent words in Spanish. A total of 209 L1-English learners of L2-Spanish participated in the study. Focusing on internal technical qualities of the test, Rasch measurement analysis was employed to provide evidence regarding four aspects of construct validity: content (i.e. representativeness and technical quality), substantive, structural, and generalizability. Results showed that (1) the items presented adequate spread of difficulty, (2) items demonstrated high levels of unidimensionality, and (3) O-WSVLT displayed an excellent fit to the Rasch model, with Rasch person and item reliability coefficients of 0.97 and 0.99 respectively. O-WSVLT fills a gap by providing L2 Spanish teachers and researchers with a reliable tool to measure students' written receptive meaning-recall vocabulary knowledge.