The agreement between two screening tests for language evaluation in premature and low weight children

Abstract

Abstract Objectives: to evaluate the agreement of the results in two screening tests on children's development - Denver II and Early Language Milestone Scale (ELM) aged two to three years old, born prematurely and with low weight. Methods: two screening instruments: Denver II and ELM were applied for the development in an observational cross-sectional descriptive study. The agreement between Denver II Test and its language sector and ELM were assessed by Kappa coefficient. Results: 77 children evaluated, 36.3% had an overall loss of the development performed by Denver II and 32.5% loss of the language by ELM. The agreement between the results of Denver II test considering all sectors versus ELM showed Kappa coefficient of 0.856 (p<0.001) and considering only the language sector of Denver II versus ELM, the Kappa coefficient was 0.886 (p<0.001). Conclusions: the developmental impairment observed in the children studied by assessing Denver II and through its language sector showed agreement with changes in the language abilities observed in ELM.

Keywords

• Infant
• premature
• Neonatology
• Language development
• Coefficient Kappa