Cross-Cultural Adaptation of A Developmental Test (Dial-R) for Young Children in Taiwan

Abstract

DIAL-R (Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning-Revised), a developmental test for children 2 to 6 years old, was modified minimally and translated for use in Taiwan. After it was normed on a stratified sample of 322 children in Taipei, analyses of internal consistency, construct validity, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity all indicated that the test meets the standards of a technically adequate screening test for that culture, giving it criterion-referenced meaning. In addition, some tentative cross-cultural comparisons of young children's motoric, conceptual, and language development can be drawn. Whereras the normative data suggest that most skills develop at comparable ages in the two cultures, there are some notable exceptions, some of which develop earlier in American children, others of which develop earlier in Chinese children. These differences are discussed in context with environmental and cultural components, giving the test construct-referenced meaning.

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