Development and Validation of Trivandrum Development Screening Chart for Children Aged 0-6 years [TDSC (0-6)]

• Published in: Indian journal of pediatrics 2013-11, Vol.80 (Suppl 2), p.248-255
• Main Authors: Nair, M. K. C., Nair, G. S. Harikumaran, George, Babu, Suma, N., Neethu, C., Leena, M. L., Russell, Paul Swamidhas Sudhakar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Child; Child, Preschool; Community Health Services; Developmental Disabilities - diagnosis; Female; Gynecology; Humans; India; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Male; Mass Screening - methods; Mass Screening - standards; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Observer Variation; Pediatrics; Psychological Tests - standards; Reference Standards; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Special Supplement on Adolescent Care Counseling
• ISSN: 0019-5456; 0973-7693
• DOI: 10.1007/s12098-013-1144-2

Objective To develop and validate a simple screening tool for identifying developmental delay among children of 0–6 y of age in the community. Methods The 51-items of Trivandrum Development Screening Chart for children of 0–6 y [TDSC (0–6 y)], were carefully prepared from the norms in various existing developmental charts/scales, by experts keeping in mind the face validity and content validity. The criterion validity was assessed in a community sample of 1,183 children of 0–6 y with a mean age of 35.38 mo (SD of 19.25) including 597 (50.46 %) boys and 586 (49.54 %) girls. TDSC (0–6 y) was validated against Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) as the ‘Reference Standard’. Results When one item delay in TDSC (0–6 y) was considered as ‘TDSC delay’ (test positive), the sensitivity and specificity of TDSC (0–6 y) was found to be 84.62 % (95 % CI: 71.92–93.12) and 90.8 % (95 % CI: 88.97–92.43) respectively with a Negative Predictive Value of 99.23 % (95 % CI: 98.48–99.67) and LR (negative) of 0.17(95 % CI: 0.09–0.32). The test-retest and inter-rater reliability [an interclass correlation (ICC) of 0.77 for test-retest and ICC of 0.97 for inter-rater] were good and acceptable. Conclusions TDSC (0–6 y) is a simple, reliable and valid screening tool for use in the community to identify children between 0 and 6 y with developmental delay, enabling early intervention practices.