Title: Use of Ages and Stages Questionnaires™ (ASQ) in a Navajo population: Comparison with the U.S. normative dataset.
Authors: Nozadi, Sara S; Li, Li; Clifford, Jantina; Du, Ruofei; Murphy, Kimberly; Chen, Lu; Navajo Birth Cohort Study Team; Seanez, Paula; Burnette, Courtney; MacKenzie, Debra; Lewis, Johnnye L
Published In Child Care Health Dev, (2019 09)
Abstract: The Ages and Stages Questionnaires-Third Edition (ASQ-3) is a parent-completed screening to identify young children at-risk for developmental delays in the United States and internationally. Federal programs operating on Navajo Nation use the ASQ-3 to determine the need for early intervention services, even though the ASQ-3 national sample used to establish cutoff scores for referral included only 1% Native American children.The current study aimed to compare the ASQ-3 results from a sample of Navajo infants to those from a representative national U.S. sample and to examine the specificity and sensitivity of the ASQ-3 in Navajo population.The sample included 530 Navajo infants (47.3% males) aged between 1 and 13 months who lived in remote and rural areas across the Navajo Nation. Children's development was assessed during home visits at 2-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month assessment windows.Results showed that after 6 months, Navajo children had lower mean scores and higher percentages of children at-risk for developmental delays than those from the national sample. The sensitivities and specificities, estimated using a Bayesian diagnostic approach under both conservative and nonconservative prior range choices, suggested a comparable validity performance to that from other ASQ-3 studies.The results of this study along with our ongoing comprehensive assessments at 4 years of age inform current programs working with Navajo children to improve early identification of developmental delays.
PubMed ID:
31276599
MeSH Terms: Bayes Theorem; Child Development; Communication; Culturally Competent Care/methods; Developmental Disabilities/diagnosis*; Developmental Disabilities/psychology; Female; Humans; Infant; Male; Mass Screening/methods; Parents; Problem Solving; Psychometrics; Psychomotor Performance; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Socioeconomic Factors; Surveys and Questionnaires