engleski

Importance of adequate screening tools for preschoolers: testing ASQ-3 on Croatian population

It is estimated that around 15% of children aged 3 to 17 have some sort of developmental disabilities, while less than 50% of children with disabilities are recognized by paediatricians before entering the primary school. Screening plays a significant role in the recognition of those children, providing the ground for early intervention and support for families. Ages and stages-3 Questionnaire (ASQ-3), as the most used screening tool for children aged 2 months to 66 months, was recently translated in the Croatian language. The aim of this study was to check ASQ-3 sensitivity for a different aspect of development delays in the population of Croatian preschool children. Mothers filled out ASQ-3 and gave anamnestic data for their children (N=63, boys 71.4% and girls 28.6%). The average age of children was M=46.34 months. Children were split into three groups: children with a normal developmental pattern, i.e. without disabilities (n=13), with autism spectrum disorder (n=28) and with multiple disabilities (n=22). Chi-Square was used to test the number of children with the normal development against number of children with delays for each group of children at five different development areas according to ASQ-3 (communication, fine motor, gross motor, problem-solving, personal-social area). For children with normal developmental pattern, there was more of them with developmental delays than expected in all developmental areas (communication, gross motor, problem-solving, personal-social) except fine motor skills. About 40% - 70% of children had delays in contrast to 15% which is expected in general population. For children with autism spectrum disorders ASQ-3 has shown poor sensitivity (could not discriminate children with autism from the general population). For children with multiple disabilities ASQ-3 proven to be a good screening test on all measured developmental areas. Two important points can be argued: first, Croatian translations of ASQ-3 showed good sensitivity as a screening tool for multiple disorders ; second, practitioners, especially preschool teachers and paediatricians could use this screening tool more often in order to direct families in early intervention.

Ages & Stages, autism spectrum disorder, multiple disabilities, preschoolers, screening

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