Predictive validity of a parental questionnaire for identifying children with developmental language disorders

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Speech-Language Pathology
• Global Health
• Diagnostic Screening Tools

Background:

• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is significantly underdiagnosed in resource-limited regions.
• Parental concerns offer valuable insights for diagnosing childhood developmental issues.
• Leveraging parental input may mitigate DLD underdiagnosis challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of parental linguistic concern questions (PLCQ) in identifying DLD in Mexican children.
• To assess if biological and environmental conditions questions (BECQ) enhance DLD screening accuracy.

Main Methods:

• 680 monolingual Spanish-speaking children and parents in Mexico participated.
• Logistic regression and ROC curves analyzed diagnostic utility of PLCQ and BECQ.
• Stratum-specific likelihood ratios (SSLRs) and probability changes quantified screening performance.

Main Results:

• Four key parental linguistic concerns demonstrated utility in identifying DLD.
• High parental concern presence yielded an SSLR of 8.79; absence yielded 0.27.
• DLD probability increased from 0.12 to 0.55 with parental concerns; BECQ offered limited improvement.

Conclusions:

• Parental questionnaires serve as a viable screening tool for DLD.
• Incorporating parental linguistic concerns is crucial for effective DLD screening.
• This approach offers a practical solution to DLD underdiagnosis in Mexico.