Assessing the communication development of children with language delay through parent multi-questionnaire reporting

Abstract

Models of early intervention delivery that are family-centered and actively encourage parents to be participants in their children's therapy depend on clinicians understanding parents' perceptions of their children's developmental stage and profile. Without this, goal-setting risks missing the mark and progress monitoring becomes more difficult. Moreover, in tight financial environments that allow for limited direct observation across contexts of children's communication skills, it is important that parents can contribute their observations through clinically valuable means. This article reports on responses to three concurrently administered questionnaires by the parents of 65 children aged between 29 and 67 months with language delays in the context of multi-system disabilities. The three questionnaires were the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory from which the vocabulary scores are reported, the Language Use Inventory, and the Communication subscale of the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System. All the children were attending the same family-centered multi-disciplinary early intervention program in New Zealand. Results suggest strong correlations and high levels of consistency of parental observation between the measures as well as clear information that can be used for clinical discussion. Case study data suggest that repeated administration of the same combination of questionnaires over time allows clinicians to identify needs relevant to collaborative program planning and implementation.

Keywords:

• Early intervention
• Family-centered practice
• Parent questionnaire

Disclaimer statements

Contributors The second author helped design the research and was involved in interpreting the results and writing the manuscript. The first author did the statistical analysis and drafted the paper which was then collaboratively completed.

Funding None.

Conflicts of interest The first author is the manager of the early intervention service where the data were collected.

Ethics approval The research was completed under ethical approval from the University of Canterbury's Human Ethics Committee.

ORCID

Susan Foster-Cohen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9309-5728

Notes

1 This study has ethical approval from the University of Canterbury Human Ethics Committee.