Validity and Reliability Determination of Parents Evaluation of Developmental Status (Peds) in 4-60 Months Old Children in Tehran

Objectives: there are various developmental screening tools that are different in terms of psychometriccharacteristics and choosing the best one is challenging for the pediatrician. this research was designed toidentify the validity and reliability of parents evaluation of developmental status, a developmentalscreening questionnaire, in 4-60 months-old children in the city of tehran.methods: in order to validate the parents evaluation of developmental status, a precise translation of thequestionnaire was performed by the research team.  a persian version was back-translated by threeenglish language experts who were unfamiliar with the parents evaluation of developmental status. theback-translated version was compared with the original version. the content validity of the finalizedpersian version was verified by three pediatricians. the questionnaire was performed on 648 childrenranging from 4 to 60 months old in healthcare clinics. a test-retest method with 2-3 weeks interval andcronbach’s &alpha were used in order to determine the reliability of the questionnaire.results: all of the questions in parents evaluation of developmental status had desirable contentvalidity and there was no need to change them. the total cronbach’s &alpha coefficient was 0.63, which, whenconsidering the low number of items in parents evaluation of developmental status, is acceptable. thetest-retest correlation coefficient was determined to be 0.87, which is desirable. the estimated kappameasure agreement between parents evaluation of developmental status and ages and stagesquestionnaires was 0.30. due to the rather large sample size and similarity of the screening results byboth questionnaires in 71.5% of cases, it is possible to conclude that this measure is an acceptable one. discussion: this research showed that parents evaluation of developmental status has a good contentvalidity and reliability and can be used for developmental screening of children in tehran city. becausethe test is brief, using it can lead to saving time and resources.