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Published on: June 20, 2020
Validation of the Kidsights Measurement Tool: A parent-reported instrument to track children's development at the
Marcus R Waldman1, Katelyn Hepworth2, Jolene Johnson3
1Department of Biostatistics and Informatics, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, United States of America.
Insights
The Kidsights Measurement Tool (KMT) effectively tracks early childhood development disparities in children aged birth to five years. This parent-report tool shows strong reliability and validity, correlating with established measures and demographic factors.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Public Health
- Measurement Science
Background:
- Early childhood development disparities emerge due to social inequities in environments and geography.
- Valid, reliable, and scalable tools are crucial for monitoring these disparities across populations.
- No validated population-level measure for early childhood development (birth to 5 years) exists in the U.S.
Purpose of the Study:
- To validate the Kidsights Measurement Tool (KMT) as a parent-report, population-level instrument for tracking early childhood development.
- To assess KMT's feasibility for large-scale surveys and its ability to detect group-level developmental differences.
- To evaluate KMT's criterion associations, concurrent and longitudinal validity, and reliability.
Main Methods:
- Validation study using a sample of 5,001 parent reports from Nebraska and across the U.S.
- Assessed criterion validity through associations with parent education, mental health, and child's race/ethnicity.
- Examined concurrent and longitudinal validity by comparing KMT with gold-standard instruments (Bayley Scale, Woodcock-Johnson).
- Evaluated reliability and measurement invariance.
Main Results:
- KMT demonstrated strong evidence of detecting disparities in child development (birth to 5 years).
- Significant criterion associations were found with parent education, mental health, and child demographics.
- KMT showed strong concurrent and longitudinal associations with gold-standard developmental measures.
- The tool exhibited strong reliability, with no evidence of measurement noninvariance.
Conclusions:
- The KMT is a valid and reliable parent-report measure for tracking early childhood development disparities at the population level.
- KMT can be feasibly implemented in large-scale surveys to monitor group-level differences in development.
- Findings support the use of KMT for identifying and addressing inequities in early childhood development.
Abstract:
Disparities in child development between groups of children arise early and reflect social inequities in early environments, geography, and other factors. To track and address these disparities, valid and reliable tools are needed that can be implemented at-scale and across populations. However, no population-level measures of child development appropriate for children from birth to age five years have been developed and validated in the United States to date. The Kidsights Measurement Tool (KMT) is a parent-report, population-level tool for children birth to age five years intended to track group-level differences in the developmental status across normative aspects of children's motor, cognitive, language, and social/emotional development. This study reports on validation of KMT as a feasible tool that can be implemented in large-scale surveys to track disparities in early childhood development. Using a sample of N = 5,001 initial parent reports residing in Nebraska and across the United States, we find strong evidence that the KMT can detect disparities in child development birth to age five, as indicated by expected criterion associations with parent education and mental health, as well as child's race and ethnicity. In addition, we found that the KMT is strongly associated with gold-standard direct observation instruments (i.e., the Bayley Scale of Infant Development and the Woodcock-Johnson) that measure similar developmental constructs both concurrently and one-year 12-24 months later. Finally, the KMT exhibits strong reliability even after controlling for age, and we find no evidence that measurement noninvariance threatens valid inferences about group difference. Taken together, our findings indicate that a parent-report measure can generate valid and useful estimates for tracking disparities in early child development at the population level.
