The Effect of Practice on Performance in a Reading Attainment Test

S ummary . Although it is highly desirable that educational progress should be assessed by means of standardised attainment tests, this procedure often encounters difficulties. The artificial inflation of re‐test results by practice effects is a particularly awkward problem. The present study was designed to measure the extent of this effect on parallel forms of a recently developed attainment test, namely the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability. It was found that this Test is of high reliability and is insensitive to practice effects.