This article reports on the development and validation of a set of developmental scales for environmentally disadvantaged pre-school children. Designed to be culturally appropriate and child-friendly, they yvere intended to identify cognitive and motor developmental problems that were commonly experienced by such children and that were impeding their progress at school. Acceptably high indices of test-retest reliability and inter-rater reliability were found. Satisfactory indices of concurrent and construct validity have been obtained. Factor analyses yielded one general factor that was interpreted as a cognitive performance factor. The finding that developmentally stimulated children performed substantially better than unstimulated children on these scales not only supported the scales' construct validity but also necessitated the development of separate norms for children from such different backgrounds.
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