A psychometric study of the Russian-language version of the “Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development–third edition”: An assessment of reliability and validity

Abstract

IntroductionThe Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development–third edition (Bayley-III) is one of the most widely used tools for assessing child development, and adapted versions of this instrument have been successfully used in many countries. No comprehensive psychometric studies of the Bayley-III have yet been performed in Russia.Materials and methodsThis psychometric study was part of the longitudinal study conducted by the Ural Federal University in 2016–2020. Within the project, the original Bayley-III manual was translated into Russian and then used in a cohort of 333 infants to assess cognition, expressive/receptive communication, and fine/gross motor skills. For the purpose of psychometric analysis, we selected the data for four age groups of children from the longitudinal study database: 4–6 months (N = 149), 10 months (N = 138), 15 months (N = 151), and 24 months (N = 124). The development scores of the sample children were compared with the original Bayley-III norms in each age strata separately. Reliability and validity of the translated instrument were examined using correlation analysis, tests of internal consistency, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).ResultsThe average scaled scores of the examined children were generally comparable with the original (US) Bayley-III norms, with the exception of those older than 1 year, who demonstrated 1.2–1.9 points better performance in cognitive development and gross motor skills and 0.9–2.6 points lower performance in expressive communication. The correlation of both raw and scaled scores between different scales was low to moderate in all age groups (Spearman’s ρ mostly within the range of 0.3–0.6; p < 0.001 for all pairwise correlations). Internal consistency tests confirmed high reliability of the translated instrument (Cronbach’s α = 0.74–0.87, McDonald’s ω = 0.79–0.89). CFA demonstrated a good fit of the three-factor model (cognitive, communicative, and motor components) in all age strata.ConclusionThe Russian version of the Bayley-III proved to be a psychometrically valid and reliable tool for assessing child development, at least in a research context. The development of the examined children was close to the original US norms, with some deviation in cognitive, gross motor, and expressive communication scores mostly in older children, which could be attributed to the biased sample.

Early cognitive assessment in premature infants: the discriminatory value of eye-tracking vs. Bayley Scales

“…The tool measures the development of infants 1 to 42 months of age in five domains: cognition, language, motor, social–emotional and adaptive behavior. The tool was initially developed for English-speaking populations but it has been adapted in a number of different languages/cultures (for Greek see Velikos et al, 2015 ; for Dutch see Steenis et al, 2015 ; for Ethiopian see Hanlon et al, 2016 ; for Persian see Azari et al, 2017 ; for Nepal Bhasa and Nepali see Ranjitkar et al, 2018 ; for Mandarin see Hua et al, 2019 ; for Kenyan see McHenry et al, 2021 ; for Russian see Pavlova et al, 2022 among many others). Note though that the adaptation and psychometric validation of the socioemotional and adaptive behavior domains in different language/culture contexts is not always attainable hence most prior research focuses on three scales: the cognitive scale, the language scale and the motor scale.…”

Impacts of Integrating Family-Centered Care and Developmental Care Principles on Neonatal Neurodevelopmental Outcomes among High-Risk Neonates

“…The Bayley-III has high inter-rater reliability for the cognitive, language, and motor scales, with correlations ranging from 0.93 to 0.99 [28]. This indicates strong consistency in scores across different examiners.…”

“…This suggests the results are stable over time. Internal consistency is adequate to high for composite scores (α = 0.91-0.93) [26,28] 2.…”