Reliability and Validity of Infant-Toddler Auditory and Communicative Behavioral Checklist

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze the reliability and validity, and compare the Infant-Toddler Auditory and Communicative Behavioral Checklist (IT-ACBC) to general developmental levels of Korean Developmental Screening Test for infant & children (K-DST) for identifying characteristics of the checklist. Methods: IT-ACBC were administered by 287 parents of the normally developing infants aged from 1-26 months. After considering internal consistency reliability, frequency of response to each month group, and questions from respondents, 36 items, 3 items for 12 month groups, were finally extracted from the preliminary items. The internal consistency of items and test-retest reliability were calculated. The validity for items were conducted by attempting a concurrent validity analysis. Average and standard deviation of IT-ACBC was analyzed to standardize a criterion. The correlation between auditory and communicative behavioral ability of IT-ACBC and 6 general developmental skills of K-DST scores were obtained to identify their relationship. Results: The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of IT-ACBC was 0.964. The test-retest reliability was quite high with r = 0.962. The score of the checklist was significantly correlated with 'LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire-Korean' score. The score of the IT-ACBC was significantly correlated with the language score of K-DST (r = 0.426). Conclusion: IT-ACBC was developed and standardized scores were provided to evaluate auditory and communicative behavior in typically developing infants and toddlers. IT-ACBC can be utilized for checking auditory and communicative behaviors briefly. Further, IT-ACBC also can be utilized to assess auditory and communicative behaviors for multi-handicapped children comparing with other functions of K-DST.