Concurrent Validity of the Griffiths' Mental Development Scales with a Population of Children Under 24 Months

Abstract

The Griffiths' Mental Development Scales have been recommended for use in diagnostic assessment with infants and toddlers with special needs. The Griffiths' scales are British in origin, were developed in 1950, and cover five areas of infant development. This study compared results of Griffiths assessments with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and the Battelle Developmental Inventory for a population of 30 children under 24 months of age. All children had been referred to an early intervention program. While the Griffiths correlated well with the two comparison measures, age equivalents obtained on the Griffiths were considerably higher than those obtained from the Bayley and the Battelle. The authors suggest that the Griffiths be restandardized on an American population of infants to increase its usefulness as a diagnostic instrument for early intervention programs.

Use of the 1996 Griffiths Mental Development Scales for infants: a pilot study with a Black, South African sample

“…Since this scale may be influenced by socio-cultural and/or emotional differences (Griffiths 1984), the differences found could be a consequence of different childrearing practices between the two cultural groups. Furthermore, the Personal-Social Scale is one of the least cognitive of the Griffiths Scales and requires more input from primary caregivers than the other scales because it measures selfhelp behaviours typically seen at home, as well as social behaviour that develops through early adult-child interactions (McLean, McCormick and Baird 1991). Aldridge Smith et al (1980) also found that the Personal-Social Scale of the 1970 version of the Griffiths Scales was more sensitive to use by different assessors when evaluating the development of infants from 6 months to 7.25 years.…”

Impact of Sepsis on Neurodevelopmental Outcome in a Swiss National Cohort of Extremely Premature Infants

“…Only infants who had been tested with the BSID-II by an experienced neuropediatrician were included because evaluation by Griffith Motor Scales may underestimate neurodevelopmental delay. 39 The definition of sepsis required cultureproven bacteremia, which represents the gold standard for infection. 40,41 Because postnatal growth has an independent effect on neurodevelopment, 42 multivariable analyses were adjusted for postnatal growth.…”

Evaluating the Psychometric Integrity of Instruments Used in Early Intervention Research

“…Several researchers reported additional data regarding the concurrent validity of the BDI with other well-known early childhood measures for study samples containing children with disabilities (e.g., Boyd, Welge, Sexton, & Miller, 1989;McLean, McCormick, &c Baird, 1991;McLean, McCormick, Bruder, &: Burdg, 1987;Sexton, Thompson, Perez, & Rheams, 1990). Correlations between subdomains on the BDI and these other measures are moderate to high and positive, indicating that scores on the BDI have adequate criterion validity for selected nonnormative samples.…”