Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 04/2014 |
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<mark>Journal</mark> | Acta Paediatrica |
Issue number | 4 |
Volume | 103 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Pages (from-to) | 447-454 |
Publication Status | Published |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
AIM: Sub-Saharan Africa bears a disproportionate amount of global diseases related to neurodevelopmental delays in infancy, including malnutrition, malaria and HIV. Evaluating interventions to prevent such delays requires developmental assessment tools appropriate for Sub-Saharan Africa. This study aimed to develop and evaluate such a tool.
METHODS: The Developmental Milestones Checklist (DMC) was developed in Kenya to provide motor, language and personal-social scores for children aged from 3 to 24 months. We developed an extended version (DMC-II) in Burkina Faso, West Africa, and then evaluated the reliability and sensitivity of the scores to age and nutritional and environmental measures.
RESULTS: The internal, interinterviewer and test-retest reliability of the DMC-II scores were >0.7. In 214 children aged 11.6-25.4 months, each score correlated with age (rs > 0.7). In 1123 children aged 16.8-19.9 months, the scores were sensitive to stunting, wasting and underweight (effect sizes 0.31-0.87 SD). The scores also showed expected correlations with measures of play materials in the home and activities with caregivers (rs = 0.13-0.41).
CONCLUSION: The DMC-II is easily used by trained fieldworkers with no previous experience in developmental assessment. It is a practical, reliable and sensitive tool for evaluating motor, language and personal-social development in different contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa.