The developmental assessment of deaf children using the development assessment of young children and the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (third edition).

Abstract

The various aspects of early childhood development are closely interwoven, and thus a delay in any area of development may impact other areas of development. For young deaf or hard-of-hearing children, a difficulty in communication may potentially result in delays in other areas of development, namely cognitive, motor, social-emotional and adaptive behaviour. Early intervention programmes, such as HI HOPES, thus need to conduct regular holistic developmental assessments on children in the programmes to pinpoint areas of weakness so that these can be purposefully addressed so that the child may reach their developmental potential. Two such assessments are the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development – Third Edition (BSID) and the Developmental Assessment of Young Children (DAYC). HI HOPES had been utilizing the BSID, but hoped to substitute it with the DAYC in the hopes that it would better meet their assessment needs. This research study examines the use, advantages and disadvantages of both of these developmental meausres within the HI HOPES context, in order to determine whether they meet the programme’s needs. This was achieved through a series of individual interviews with the Parent Advisors, which considered various aspects of these assessments. Further, the researcher investigated whether the DAYC would be a suitable substitute for the BSID by determining whether the two measures produce similar results for the same group of young deaf children through running correlations and matched-pairs statistical tests. Both the DAYC and the BSID were seen to elicit valuable, detailed information that provides guidance for HI HOPES, and thus perceived to useful and applicable for HI HOPES. Finally, it was found that the DAYC could serve as a suitable substitute of the BSID when used with deaf in infants and children, although there was variability in what the Social-Emotional and Adaptive Behaviour scales measured as they were not subject to objective scoring procedures