Construction of a Danish CDI short form for language screening at the age of 36 months: methodological considerations and results.
Several research groups have previously constructed short forms of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) for different languages. We consider the specific aim of constructing such a short form to be used for language screening in a specific age group. We present a novel strategy for the construction, which is applicable if results from a population-based study using the CDI long form are available for this age group. The basic approach is to select items in a manner implying a left-skewed distribution of the summary score and hence a reliable discrimination among children in the lower end of the distribution despite the measurement error of the instrument. We report on the application of the strategy in constructing a Danish CDI short form and present some results illustrating the validity of the short form. Finally we discuss the choice of the most appropriate age for language screening based on a vocabulary score.
Clinical Epidemiology, Institute of Medical Biometry and Medical Informatics, University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany. wv@imbi.uni-freiburg.de
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D002675:Child, Preschool; D003718:Denmark; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests / Q000592:standards*; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D017678:Sex Distribution