About MABEL

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Background

The MABEL battery was developed over three years (2008 – 2011) as part of a large-scale, longitudinal, cross-linguistic study of early literacy development in English, French, Spanish, Czech and Slovak, within ELDEL (Enhancing Literacy Development in European Languages). The project was funded by  Marie Curie – Initial Training Network, Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement no. 215961. The main goal of the project was to elucidate the core cognitive, linguistic, and environmental predictors of children’s literacy development from kindergarten to the second grade.  Five parallel studies were conducted, one in each country.  Work on the MABEL project started in 2015, and became internationally disseminated in 2018. Currently, test materials are available in English, Spanish, Czech, Slovak and Welsh, with French materials forthcoming.  In addition, Portuguese and Polish language versions of the battery are in development.

Contents

MABEL contains the most important and sensitive assessments of early literacy, as validated in each language of the ELDEL project. A unique feature of the MABEL battery is that each test was created to be parallel (directly comparable) across languages.  The skills assessed are: letter knowledge, phoneme awareness, and rapid naming, as well as reading and spelling.

To date, four major papers have been published, in which these tests were used in cross-linguistic comparisons (Caravolas et al., 2012, 2013, 2017, 2019).

Additional publications about the MABEL tool include:

Mikulajová, M. (2019). MABEL – multijazyková batéria testov ranej gramotnosti, založená na dôkazoch [MABEL – Multilanguage Assessment Battery of Early Literacy – An evidence-based tool]. Psychológia a patopsychológia dieťaťa, 53, 2019, 2, 134–146.

How to navigate

Under the MABEL TESTS tab, you can find various language versions of the battery. These can be accessed by clicking on the flag of the language you wish to use. In order to access the paper and pencil version of these materials, please go to the SIGN IN tab and register to become a subscribed MABEL test user. Test versions for computer assisted administration are forthcoming.

Acknowledgments

The team collaborating on the original ELDEL Work Package (WP1) that gave rise to the MABEL test battery included Senior Scientists Markéta Caravolas (Project Coordinator), Denis Alamargot, Sylvia Defior, Michel Fayol, Charles Hulme, Marína Mikulajová, Gabriela Seidlová Málková; Experienced Researcher Petroula Mousikou, Early Stage Researchers Corina Effrim, Miroslav Litavsky, Eduardo Onochie, Naymé Salas, Miroslava Schöffelová.  The participating universities were: Bangor University, Wales, UK; University of Poitiers, FR; University of Granada, SP;  Blaise Pascal University, Clermont Ferrand, FR; University of York, UK; Comenius University in Bratislava, SK; Charles University, CZ. Associated and Visiting Senior Scientists contributing to the WP1 project were Arne Lervåg , University of Oslo, NO; and Brett Kessler, Washington University, US.

Citation and References

To cite the MABEL website, please use the following reference:

Caravolas, M., Mikulajová, M., Defior, S., & Seidlová Málková, G. (2019). Multilanguage Assessment Battery of Early Literacy. MABEL. https://www.eldel-mabel.net/

To cite the MABEL tests in any language please go to the Citation and References section at the bottom of the About MABEL page for the specific language (Cymraeg,). You can also find citation guidance on the individual test pages.

To cite English tests, please use the following reference:

Caravolas, M., Mikulajová, M., Defior, S., & Seidlová Málková, G. (2018). Tests. Multilanguage Assessment Battery of Early Literacy. MABEL. https://www.eldel-mabel.net/test/

For references, visit our publications page.