Developmental assessment of preterm and term children at 18 months: reproducibility and validity of a postal questionnaire to parents

Abstract

Aim: To examine the degree of agreement between the paediatrician's assessment and parental reporting of infants’development using a postal questionnaire. Methods: The developmental status of 241 infants in the charge of 9 community paediatricians or discharged from one Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) was assessed by their parents 18 mo after delivery, using a postal questionnaire regarding child's height, weight, respiratory, hearing and vision problems, and items taken mainly from the Griffiths’Developmental Scales. At this age, infants were seen by the community or NICU paediatricians, for a complete physical and neurodevelopmental examination. Results: The mean agreement on items regarding developmental areas between parents and paediatricians was 93.0%. In general, parents and professionals agreed on items describing gross motor behaviour (k from 0.39 to 0.83) and disagreed on individual questions describing language/ relational behaviour (k from 0 to 0.38). A 97.9% level of agreement was found for hearing status (k= 0), and 96.2% for assessment of vision (k= 0.29), whereas the level of agreement ranged from 43.2% to 86.2% (k from 0 to 0.15) for the three questions describing respiratory problems. The mean weight and height assessments by paediatricians and parents of infants at 18 mo of age were similar. Conclusions: Further improvement of the questionnaire is needed, but our findings suggest that this methodology can be considered for use in comparing large cohorts of infants included in randomized clinical trials.

Fever during pregnancy and motor development in children: a study within the Danish National Birth Cohort

“…However, in the years after the attainment of motor milestones, parents are likely to remember the age of attainment with great precision . Furthermore, one study has shown that parental assessment of children's motor development is often consistent with that of professionals . The mean ages at attaining the two milestones were consistent with findings in other studies .…”

Admissions of all gestations to a regional neonatal unit versus controls: 2‐year outcome

“…A variety of questionnaires and assessment tools have been used. Agreement between parents and professionals is better for severe than for moderate disability 11,27–32 . In our study, the relatively poor agreement between parents and professionals may have been influenced by several factors, including small numbers and different interpretation of speech abilities.…”

Parent-reported health in extremely preterm and extremely low-birthweight children at age 8 years compared with comparison children born at term

“…study, however, were obtained by applying the questionnaire criteria to previously obtained clinical and psychometric data, rather than comparing clinical data with concurrently obtained questionnaire data, as done in the current study. Parent reports of the developmental status of neonatal intensive care unit graduates at 18 months were compared with the results of clinical assessment by community paediatricians by Bortolus et al., 23 who found a mean agreement of 93% between the two measures. Agreement was strongest for vision, hearing, and motor function but weak for language and behaviour items.…”