Αλεξάνδρα Καρούσου, Parents as informants of their children’s communication and language skills: concurrent validity study of the Communication Development Report (CDR)., Έρευνα στην Εκπαίδευση, 4|2015,

Young children’s communication and language screening constitutes an important need of the educational, as well as clinical practice. Psychometric instruments based on structured parental reports are considered as valid sources of information regarding infants’ and toddlers’ communication skills. This study aims at exploring the concurrent validity of the Communication Development Report (CDR, Karousou & Petrogiannis, in press) a new parental report instrument developed and standardized in Greece for the early screening of children aged 7 to 30 months. Fifty four children were video-recorded based on an observational protocol developed for the needs of this study. On the same day their parents filled in the CDR. The correlations between these two independent measures (CDR vs. observational) for all dimensions of communication development assessed (preverbal communication –vocal and non-vocal–, language comprehension, productive vocabulary, morphology and syntax) are found to be highly significant in all cases. Additionally, the impact of maternal education and children’s age on these correlations is explored. Overall, results provide robust support for the validity of the CDR and for parent’s ability to provide reliable information regarding their children’s communication and language skills, independently of their educational background and their children’s age.