Maternal Versus Professional Estimates of Developmental Status for Young Children with Handicaps

Abstract

One of the most hotly debated issues in the assessment of infants and young children with handicaps has been the role of parents in the assessment process. Traditionally, professionals have excluded from consideration parental judgments of child developmental status on the assumption that such data are inflated. The present study compared maternal judgments about the developmental status of their children enrolled in early intervention programs with independently obtained developmental testing data for the 53 children. The results indicated that (a) maternal and professional estimates were highly correlated; (b) mothers systematically provided higher estimates across developmental domains; and (c) child IQ was the most noteworthy predictor of agreement in developmental estimates derived from mothers. Results of this study suggest the need for close family-professional collaboration during the entire intervention process, because the two data sources order children similarly, but parental data result in overestimates of development relative to actual performance data.