Abstract
The original Battelle Developmental Inventory (BDI) was published in 1984 based on the concept of milestones, which refer to certain skills and behaviors that children typically develop at specific time periods in their lives (Newborg, Stock, Wnek, Guidubaldi, & Svinicki, 1984). The BDI was designed to determine where on the developmental trajectory a child is functioning and consisted of five developmental domains: Adaptive, Personal-Social, Communication, Motor, and Cognitive. In 2005, the BDI-Second Edition (BDI-2) was published and includes the same five developmental domains as the original BDI (Newborg, 2005a). This review and evaluation of the technical characteristics of the BDI-2 (Newborg, 2005a) was conducted using criteria set forth by Alfonso and Flanagan (2009). These criteria were determined after the authors reviewed 34 comprehensive descriptions, and reviews of, and criteria for evaluating norm-referenced instruments for preschoolers. Although their list of characteristics and evaluative criteria is not exhaustive or inarguable (e.g., there are no criteria for test ceilings or standard error of measurement), we believe that for the most part, they are comprehensive and applicable to the BDI-2. (1) In the test review that follows, first we provide a brief overview of the BDI-2, discuss the administration and scoring procedures, and describe the test's materials. Next, we provide a critical evaluation of the technical adequacy of the instrument including standardization characteristics, reliability, test floors, item gradients, and validity. Finally, we briefly describe the BDI-2 Screener, draw some conclusions about the BDI-2, and make some recommendations regarding the use of the BDI-2 in practice. Test Description The BDI-2 (Newborg, 2005a) is a behaviorally based, individually administered, standardized assessment battery of developmental skills of children from birth through 7 years, 11 months of age. The BDI-2 is produced and distributed by the Riverside Publishing Company and is a revised version of the original BDI published in 1984 (Newborg et al.). The BDI-2 may be used as a comprehensive assessment or screening tool of functional abilities across five major domains of development (i.e., Adaptive, Personal-Social, Communication, Motor, and Cognitive). Each domain is comprised of either two or three subdomains. Table 1 provides the names and number of items for each BDI-2 domain and subdomain. Although the BDI-2 full battery consists of 450 items, only a subset of them is administered to a child based on the child's age range (Athanasiou, 2007). As reported in the administration manual, depending on the age of the child, the full battery can typically be administered between 1 and 1.5 hours. The Screening test has an administration time ranging from 10 to 30 minutes (Newborg, 2005b). The standard applications of the BDI-2 include identifying current developmental levels, as well as strengths and learning opportunities of typically developing children and children with disabilities, as well as to assess infants and children considered to be at-risk for developmental delay (Newborg, 2005b). Additional uses of the BDI-2 include general screening of preschool and kindergarten children, developing individualized education programs, and monitoring student progress on short- and long-term bases. The BDI-2 is primarily designed for use by infant interventionists; preschool, kindergarten, and primary school teachers; and special educators. However, the BDI-2 is also often used by other professionals such as speech pathologists, school psychologists, and clinical diagnosticians (Newborg, 2005b). The BDI-2 retained several important features from the original BDI and many of the subdomains and items from the first edition are found in the second edition. However, outdated items were deleted and new items were added to reflect more recent research findings related to cognitive development and to correspond better with early childhood curricula. …
Showing the abstract — retrieve the full paper via the Exa API.