Introduction
Children age birth to five experience rapid physical, cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional development. Screening children for healthy growth and development is recommended to identify areas in need of evaluation and provide effective intervention. However, early childhood practitioners often don’t have the technical knowledge to evaluate which developmental screening tools are reliable and valid.
This compendium includes profiles for sixteen commonly used developmental screening tools for children from birth to age five. You will also find summary tables for at a glance information, an overview of validity and reliability and why they matter when choosing developmental screening tools, and an overview of the standards used to evaluate these tools.
Purpose
This compendium has three purposes:
• Discussing the purpose of developmental screening and how it differs from child assessment.
• Helping early childhood practitioners determine whether a developmental screening tool is appropriate for the population they serve
• Highlighting areas in which the early childhood field is lacking information on reliability and validity of available developmental screening tools
Key Findings and Highlights
Readers will find in this report three summary tables on pages 9 — 14 that allow for the quick comparison of information across developmental screening tools.
• Summary Table 1 provides general information about each screening tool
• Summary Table 2 shows evidence for both reliability and validity for each screening tool
• Summary Table 3 shows evidence for reliability and validity across languages other than English and in select populations for each screening tool
Methods
In order to describe the reliability and validity of these tools, we selected values that represent different levels and types of reliability and validity. We established criteria for each of these values based on accepted standards in the field. We then analyzed these values against the information presented in each tool’s technical manual and ranked them according to that value’s criterion.
Citation
Moodie, S., Daneri, P., Goldhagen, S., Halle, T., Green, K., & LaMonte, L. (2014). Early childhood developmental screening: A compendium of measures for children ages birth to five, OPRE Report 2014-11, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.