The effects of race and maternal education level on children's retells of the Renfrew Bus Story--North American Edition.

PURPOSE: The Renfrew Bus Story--North American Edition (RBS-NA; C. Glasgow & J. Cowley, 1994) is widely used in clinical and research settings to determine children's language abilities, although possible influences of race and maternal education on RBS-NA performance are unknown. The current study compared RBS-NA retells of 4 groups of children: African American (AA) children and European American (EA) children whose mothers had an education level of high school or less (≤ HS) and those whose mothers had an education level higher than high school (> HS).

METHOD: Statistical tests were used to examine 172 kindergartners' story retells using raw scores for all 4 RBS-NA measures: (a) Information, (b) Sentence Length, (c) Complexity, and (d) Independence.

RESULTS

A 2 × 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed main effects of maternal education and race for the Information score, with ≤ HS and AA children scoring lower. For measures not meeting ANOVA assumptions, 2 × 2 ANOVAs using ranked data indicated significant main effects of maternal education for Sentence Length, Complexity, and Independence measure, with ≤ HS children scoring lower within the AA group.

CONCLUSION

There are systematic effects of maternal education and race on children's RBS-NA performance, which is important for both researchers and clinicians to take into account when using this instrument.