Validation of a developmental screening checklist for Chinese preschoolers in Hong Kong

Abstract

There are concerns about the cultural validity of applying developmental screeners developed and normed in Western countries to other sociocultural contexts. Given the scarcity of culturally validated developmental checklists for use among Chinese children, the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children (HKSPC) has developed the HKSPC Developmental Checklist (HKSPC-DC) for preschool teachers to identify children at risk of developmental delays through daily observation of children’s functioning at school. This study explored the psychometric properties of the HKSPC-DC among 1183 preschool children aged 2–6 recruited from 14 nursery schools in Hong Kong. The HKSPC-DC showed excellent internal consistency, good interrater and test–retest reliabilities, and acceptable concurrent validity when correlated with the Taipei City Developmental Checklist for Preschoolers (Taipei II), which is the only screening instrument developed in a Chinese society and validated across 4- to 72-month-olds. The HKSPC-DC also showed good discriminatory power in identifying preschoolers potentially at risk of developmental delays. This screening tool may help facilitate early identification of children with developmental vulnerabilities in Chinese preschool populations.