Outcomes of Children
with Hearing Impairment

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CDI

Child Developmental Inventory

CDI was developed by Harold Ireton in 1992. It is a caregiver questionnaire that systematically looks at a child’s development in a broad range of areas. The CDI helps caregivers and professionals to identify a child’s strengths and difficulties. It is designed to be used with children between the ages of one year and six years.

To complete the CDI you will need the question booklet and a multiple choice response sheet. The question booklet contains 300 statements which a caregiver then reports are either true (YES) or untrue (NO) for the child. The Y and N responses are marked on the response sheet as you can see.

The items in the CDI describe behaviours that can be observed by caregivers in everyday situations. Caregiver report is important as they are able to observe the child over a period of time in daily life situations. There are eight different groups of items on the CDI as well as a summary of development (general development) and some problem items.

Social

 40 items that include the child’s interaction with caregivers, children and other adults. This also looks at group participation. Example items –
  • Shows affection: Gives hugs or kisses
  • Follows simple game rules in board or card games

Self Help

 40 items exploring the child’s eating, dressing, bathing, toileting and independence. Example items
  • Chews food
  • Buttons one or more buttons

Gross Motor

 30 items examining walking, running, climbing, jumping, riding, balance and coordination. Examples include –
  • Sits without support
  • Does cartwheels

Fine Motor

 30 items involving hand-eye coordination, drawing and cutting. Examples include
  • Picks up object with one hand
  • Draws recognisable pictures

Expressive Language

 50 items – expressive communication such as gestures, babbling, verbal behaviour and complex language structures. Examples include –
  • Asks for “more” or “another one”
  • Names the days of the week in the correct order

Language Comprehension

 50 items considering understanding of language. This includes understanding words and concepts. Examples include –
  • Waves “bye-bye” or “goodbye”
  • Identifies at least four colours by name correctly

Letters

 15 items covering knowledge of letters and words, writing and early reading. Examples include –
  • Tries to read familiar books. Or reads them.
  • Attempts to read words by separating them into parts, for example, “el-e-phant”

Numbers

 15 items related to knowledge of quantity and numbers. Items consider counting and simple arithmetic. Examples include –
  • Understands “one” and gives you one when you ask for “one”
  • Prints the numbers 1 through 9

General Development

70 items selected from each of the above scales. This is a summary of the whole index.

Problem Items

 30 items describing symptoms and behaviour difficulties of young children. Examples include –
  • Seems to have trouble seeing
  • Passive, seldom shows initiative
  • Overly aggressive

To score the CDI, the statements are broken up into their respective categories and one point is given for every ‘yes’ response. This gives a score for the child’s performance in each category (except for problem items).

To make the child’s score meaningful it is necessary to compare his/her performance to that of other children the same age. To make this possible the developers of the CDI gave the questionnaire to 568 children to determine what the most common score for each scale was at children of different ages. In this way it is then possible to compare any child to a ‘typically developing’ child of the same age.

The CDI provides a profile which can be used to easily compare a child’s development in each area to that of other children of the same age, as shown in the picture. The eight different scales are listed along the upper horizontal axis. Chronological age is on the vertical axes. The numbers within the body of the graph are the scores able to be achieved on each scale. Looking at Sophie’s CDI profile we see that ‘letters’ is an area of strength for her. She achieved slightly better than the ‘average’ three year old in this area. However, Sophie is having difficulty in the gross motor area, with the gross motor skills equivalent to those of the ‘average’ 19mth old child.

Through the NAL outcomes project the CDI is currently available in English, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and Vietnamese.

For more information on the CDI visit http://www.childdevrev.com

www.outcomes.nal.gov.au