Translation and adaptation of "Checklist of pragmatic behaviors’'to Farsi: a preliminary study

objective: Pragmatic skills play a significant role in social interaction and highly influences the determination of future academic achievement. Early pragmatic assessment provides early intervention that's why there is necessity of pragmatic assessment tools in children. In this regard, there is a need for an observational tool for preschool level for pragmatic studies in Iran. The Checklist of Pragmatic Behaviors is regarded as an observational tool to assess the pragmatic skills of ages 3 to 5 years. Therefore, this study aims to translate and adapt the Checklist of Pragmatic Behaviors for Persian language. Method: The present study is an methodological study conducted in Isfahan in 1397. The participants of the study were 63 children in three age groups of 3, 4 and 5 years' old who were selected from kindergartens and Inclusion criteria was children's age. This study has two phases, First, the Checklist of Pragmatic Behaviors was translated and adapted for the Persian language, then checking the Validity and reliability of the checklist of pragmatic behaviors in the Persian children.  The sampling type was clustered. The variables were 25 behavior items of The Checklist of the Pragmatic Behavior. The checklist has two formats, that the first format was used to assessment children and second format was used to re-test.  15 children who were assessed (5 any age groupes) selected for re-test in second formant after two weeks.  scores were calculated based on doing target behavior (verbal or non-verbal) or lack of target behavior in the participant. The results of the assessment were analyzed by SPSS software version 19 and through using non-parametric tests; discriminant validity "according to age", validity, criterion validity, inter-rater reliability, internal consistency reliability and test-re-test reliability were calculated. Results: The statistical findings revealed that inter-rater reliability was 96.63%, internal consistency reliability was 0.822 and the test-re-test reliability was 0.65 (p = 0.007). The total score was obtained from the calculation of the verbal and nonverbal responses of the children to 25 evaluating items in the check list. The comparison of the total score (p value = 0.00) and the score of the two subgroups of communication skills (p-value = 0.000) and conversational tools (p-value = 0.019) were significant between three groups. The results of factor analysis have identified four factors for the checklist of the pragmatic behaviors in this research. The results of criteria validity shows 0/583 correlation between total score and age and stage questionnaire and 0/286 correlation between total sore and behavior problem questioner.      Discussion and Conclusion: Checklist of pragmatic behaviors consists of 25 skills. This checklist for the participants of the study has provided acceptable psychometric features. Comparing the items score individually, some growth patterns in the three age groups were revealed. The difference in the findings of this research with other studies in some items can indicate the difference in acquisition age and using the pragmatic skills by the participants in various studies, which is influenced by their culture and language. So that, there are different expectations of children in their communications in different cultures and the communicative norms are different from other cultures. This difference in expectations and norms can lead to some differences in the communicative features of children and even differences in the improvement and development of these skills.