title: Extending the Developmental Milestones Checklist for use in a different context in Sub-Saharan Africa.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  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).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Prado
authors.forename: Amina A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Abubakar
authors.forename: Souheila
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Abbeddou
authors.forename: Elizabeth Y
authors.initials: EY
authors.lastname: Jimenez
authors.forename: Jérôme W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Somé
authors.forename: Jean-Bosco
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Ouédraogo
mesh_terms: D017954:Africa South of the Sahara; D002050:Burkina Faso; D057189:Checklist; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Child Development; Developmental assessment; Infant Development; Neurodevelopment; Sub-Saharan Africa