Performance of Israeli versus U.S. preschool children on the Miller Assessment for Preschoolers.

OBJECTIVES The Miller Assessment for Preschoolers (MAP) is a scale that can be used to evaluate preschool children with suspected preacademic problems. Before implementing the MAP in Israel, it was necessary to determine whether the U.S. norms were applicable to the Israeli preschool population. METHOD In a pilot study carried out in Israel, the Hebrew version of the MAP was administered to 2 age groups of 30 children each. The scores of Israeli children were compared with the U.S. norms on each of the MAP's 27 subtests, the five performance indices, and the total score. RESULTS There were no significant differences between the Israeli sample and the U.S. standardization sample in either age group on the MAP total score; significant differences were found in both age groups on the Foundations Index and on some specific subtests. Israeli children performed below U.S. norms on the Foundations Index. CONCLUSION These findings indicate that the performance of Israeli children overall in these two age groups is not significantly different from the performance of U.S. children. If future research demonstrates that these findings are stable across all age groups and for larger samples, the implication is that the MAP can be administered and scored in Israel with the scoring methodology and normative information developed in the United States. However, because of the poorer performance of Israeli children on the Foundations Index, we recommend that specific Israeli norms be developed.