ESSENCE-Q: Slavic language versions for developmental screening in young children

Abstract

Purpose

The Early Symptomatic Syndromes Eliciting Neurodevelopmental Clinical Examinations – Questionnaire (ESSENCE-Q) was developed as a brief screener to identify children with developmental concerns who might have neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). This study aimed to translate the ESSENCE-Q into south Slavic languages, namely, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Serbian, and Slovenian, and to evaluate its psychometric properties for screening purposes in clinical settings.

Patients and methods

In the study, the ESSENCE-Q was completed for 251 “typically developing” children and 200 children with 1 or more diagnosed NDDs, all aged 1–6 years. Internal consistency and construct validity were tested first, followed by generating receiver operating characteristic curves and the area under the curve. Optimal cutoff values were then explored.

Results

The Cronbach’s α coefficients were 0.91, 0.88, and 0.86 for ESSENCE-Q parent-completed form, and the telephone and direct interview forms administered by trained nurse or specialist, respectively. The 3 versions produced area under the curve values (95% confidence interval): 0.96 (0.93–0.99), 0.91 (0.86–0.95), and 0.91 (0.86–0.97), respectively. An optimal cutoff for ESSENCE-Q parent-completed form was found to be ≥3 points, while for the telephone and direct interviews, it was ≥5 points.

Conclusion

We found adequate measurement properties of the south Slavic languages versions of the ESSENCE-Q as a screener for NDDs in clinical settings. This study provided additional data supporting sound psychometric properties of the ESSENCE-Q.

Keywords:

• early screening
• questionnaire
• autism
• intellectual disability

Acknowledgments

We thank Daniela Todorova (pediatrician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Göteborg, Sweden), Nike Novak Vaca (psychiatrist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Göteborg, Sweden), Darko Sarovic (doctor and doctoral researcher at Gillberg Centrum, Göteborg University, Sweden), and Alen Salkic (psychologist at the Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Skaraborg Hospital, Skövde, Sweden) for all the help they provided during the second phase of the pre-final questionnaire version harmonization from English, but also from the Swedish original version. Andrijana Dodik and Aneta Lakic (Clinic for Neurology and Psychiatry for Children and Youth, Belgrade, Serbia), Senka Naumovksa (NU NUB Sveti Kliment Ohridski, Macedonia), Staša Stropnik, Melita Bokalič, and Ana Mirković from Slovenia. Two abstracts of this paper were presented at the ESSENCE 2018 Conference on April 10–11, 2018, in Gothenburg, Sweden, as poster presentations with interim findings. The posters’ abstracts were published in the Program of the Conference and are available from: http://essence2018.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ESSENCE2018-Program.pdf.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.