Development and Validation of Trivandrum Development Screening Chart for Children Aged 0-6 years [TDSC (0-6)]

Objective To develop and validate a simple screening tool for identifying developmental delay among children of 0-6 y of age in the community. Methods The 51-items of Trivandrum Development Screening Chart for children of 0-6 y [TDSC (0-6 y)], were carefully prepared from the norms in various existing developmental charts/scales, by experts keeping in mind the face validity and content validity. The criterion validity was assessed in a community sample of 1,183 children of 0-6 y with a mean age of 35.38 mo (SD of 19.25) including 597 (50.46 %) boys and 586 (49.54 %) girls. TDSC (0-6 y) was validated against Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) as the 'Reference Standard'. Results When one item delay in TDSC (0-6 y) was considered as 'TDSC delay' (test positive), the sensitivity and specificity of TDSC (0-6 y) was found to be 84.62 % (95 % CI: 71.92-93.12) and 90.8%(95% CI: 88.97-92.43) respectively with a Negative Predictive Value of 99.23%(95% CI: 98.48-99.67) and LR ((negative)) of 0.17(95 % CI: 0.09-0.32). The test-retest and inter-rater reliability [an interclass correlation (ICC) of 0.77 for test-retest and ICC of 0.97 for inter-rater] were good and acceptable. Conclusions TDSC (0-6 y) is a simple, reliable and valid screening tool for use in the community to identify children between 0 and 6 y with developmental delay, enabling early intervention practices.