Turkish validation of the maternal responsiveness global rating scale in slow-to-talk toddlers

The relation between maternal responsiveness and language development has been shown in previous literature however it is difficult to evaluate responsiveness because of the difficulties involved when coding the specific patterns of parent-child interactions. The maternal responsiveness global rating scale is important because it requires less time and expertise from professionals and predicts the language outcome of children. The aim of the study was to adapt the Maternal Responsiveness Global Rating Scale into Turkish, thereby making it accessible to a variety of professionals, and creating a way to use this useful scale.

Twenty-seven 18- to 42-month old children who had been admitted to the Developmental Pediatrics outpatient clinic with concerns of speech delay and had received a diagnosis of language disorder with the standardized language test were included in the study. The general development and language development of each participant was evaluated using Denver II, Bayley-third edition and Pre-school Language Scale-5. After the translation study of the Maternal Responsiveness Global Rating Scale, video collecting and rating procedures and finally reliability and validity analyses were implemented.

The results of this study demonstrated that the Turkish translation of the Maternal Responsiveness Global Rating Scale shows strong evidence of adequate reliability and validity and is a feasible tool to measure responsiveness in routine child health care practice for children with language delay.

This in expensive, easy-to-use and reliable tool may be recommended in order to identify which slow-to-talk toddlers and their mothers need early intervention and may be used by community-based practitioners and researchers in Turkey to support language development during early intervention stages.