The organisation of a national survey for evaluating child psychomotor development in Argentina

A total of 211 selected paediatricians were invited to participate in a national survey designed to evaluate the age of attainment of developmental milestones in children aged 0-5 years. Following a pilot study and a cascade training design, 61.1% of the paediatricians successfully completed the data collection on 139 developmental items. In the pilot study, there were more missing (not performed) items in children over one year of age, thus confirming the impression that paediatricians are more familiar with evaluating development in infants. However, in the age range 1-5 years, there were significantly fewer missing items in the gross motor area than in the other areas. Following a training programme and data editing and cleaning, a final sample of 3573 healthy, normal children was obtained. The impact of the training process was significant, in the sense that 3.5% of the items in children older than one year were not performed by the paediatricians before training, but this percentage was reduced to 1.9% after training (P < 0.01). The sample formed 0.11% of the national population less than 6 years of age and included a sex ratio of 1.01 compared with a national ratio of 1.02. There were no significant differences in the geographical distribution of the sample in comparison with that of the national population. The social composition, assessed by maternal education level, was biased towards a better education level than the national population. Mean Z-scores for height and weight were not significantly different from zero, when calculated on the basis of the national growth standards. In addition to successfully obtaining a representative sample for the analysis of the age of attainment of developmental milestones in Argentinian children, the survey also accomplished an educational objective in the training of paediatricians in developmental paediatrics.