Developing a parent vocabulary checklist for young Indigenous children growing up multilingual in the Katherine region of Australia’s Northern Territory

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study was to develop a checklist to assess vocabulary development in Indigenous Australian children, with a local focus on Indigenous Australian children growing up in the towns and communities of the Katherine Region in the Northern Territory of Australia. In this region, many families are multilingual and/or multidialectal and children’s home languages include varieties of Aboriginal English, Kriol, traditional Aboriginal languages, and/or other languages.

Method: Over four years, a checklist was iteratively developed from parent interviews, comparisons of potential items to the content and structure of the Communicative Development Inventories (CDI): Words & Gestures (Short Form), team discussions and pilot testing with 33 parents of infants aged 0–4 years.

Result: The Early Language Inventory (ERLI) checklist offers new content compared with the CDI: Words & Gestures (short form) and the OZI (Australian English CDI, long form). Initial data from 33 parents suggests the checklist has desirable features: scores correlated positively with age and related to word combining, reaching ceiling around 3 years of age for many children. Infants whose parents had concerns tended to have lower scores.

Conclusion: ERLI is a new local adaptation of the CDI (Words & Gestures) for assessing early communication among Indigenous infants growing up in the Katherine region of the Northern Territory, Australia.

Keywords:

• vocabulary
• gesture
• assessment
• parents
• Aboriginal
• Indigenous

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the families who participated in the research, as well as senior community members for their advice and guidance, and the partnerships with The Smith Family, Wurli-Wurlinjang Aboriginal Health Service, Sunrise Health Service, Hearing Australia and National Acoustic Laboratories. The authors would like to thank Caroline Hendy for early research assistance. The project was supported by funding to Western Sydney University as part of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (ARC CoEDL, CE140100041) and funding to National Acoustic Laboratories from the Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet (Australian Government). The authors would also like to thank the CDI Advisory Board for their guidance.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2020.1718209.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (FT120100777, CE140100041, LP140100468) and Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet (through funds to Australian Hearing Services).