The test has been designed to fulfill the need for a standarised test that ,in a short and simple form, would stimulate children to give samples of spoken language that could be evaluated in terms of information given and the grammatical structures used, viz. Words used to convey information, ie nouns, verbs, prepositions; present, past and future tenses; irregular forms of plural and past tenses; simple and complex sentence construction; and passive voice. Catherine Renfrew's three tests have been used for many years and provide a means of assessing children's speech and language. All tests are suitable for use with 3-8 year olds are norm referred to enable therapists to produce comparative results. Norms are given at six-monthly intervals for both the Action Picture Test and Word finding Vocabulary and monthly for the Bus Story Test.
