Internal and inter-rater reliability of the ASQ-3 in Mexican preschoolers

Introduction . Monitoring child development includes the promotion of development in the healthy child and the detection of delays and early indicators of disorders that begin in the first five years of life through easy-to-use, easy to mark, and low-cost screening tests. Objective. To evaluate the internal reliability and inter-rater reliability of the ASQ-3 in Mexican preschool children. Method. The ASQ-3 was applied to parents and/or teachers of 33 - 60 month old children who attended the Centros de Desarrollo Infantil (Child Development Centers-CENDIS) in the public and private sectors of Mexico City. Results. A total of n = 1052 questionnaires were obtained, grouped into six age groups (33, 36, 42, 48, 54, and 60 months of age) according to the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3 (ASQ-3). The levels of reliability of the ASQ-3 for each of the age groups were acceptable, with a range of α = .77 to α = .88. Regarding inter-rater reliability (parents vs . teachers), moderate correlation levels were observed. Discussion and conclusion. The results obtained suggest that this is a screening instrument that reliably evaluates the five areas of development that make up the ASQ-3 in pre-school children. This represents an opportunity to continue studying the psychometric characteristics of validity of this instrument in representative samples of Mexican children to optimize the process of early childhood development monitoring.