Development of a screening tool to identify babies at risk of language delay in India: A preliminary study

ABSTRACT

Early identification of language delay is important as it has a serious impact on a child’s life in terms of educational, social, and emotional development. Among the early language screening tools, there are some parent-administered tools; however, they are not culturally appropriate or freely available. This article documents the development and preliminary validation of a quick and easy-to-administer language screening tool for babies from 6 to 18 months of age. Parents of 100 babies ranging in age from 6 to 21 months were included in the study. The babies were classified into five screening levels according to their age. The items of a Screening Test of Early Language Development-Test version (STELD-T) were created and validated through expert opinion. The STELD-T was administered along with the Receptive Expressive Emergent Language Scale (REELS). Internal consistency using the Kuder-Richardson Formula-20 ranged from 0.457 to 0.853 across the five levels, acceptable owing to short tool length and item heterogeneity. Kappa coefficients indicated 0.459 to 0.875 agreement between the STELD-T and the REELS indicated satisfactory criterion validity. After calculating the percentage of babies with a “refer” result as well as Kappa statistics with three different pass-refer criteria, a pass-refer criterion of 75% seemed to be appropriate for screening. The STELD seems to be a reliable and valid tool to screen language development in babies from 6 months to 18 months of age in urban areas of Maharashtra. Items representing a range of language skills including pragmatics make it a unique tool.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data are not available.