Batelle Developmental Inventory

Author(s):  Jean Newborg, MA

Year of Publication: 2005; originally published 1984 

Publisher: Riverside Publishing 

Identify Type of Assessment: Battery of specific tasks, skills observation, and interview 

Cost: Complete kit: $2,002 

Population: Children birth through aged 7 years, including those with Down syndrome and autism; accommodations may be used for children with special needs. 

Appropriate Settings: Child seated at a small table or desk; child’s eyeglasses or assistive devices must be available. 

Purpose of Assessment and Function Areas Assessed: This inventory is designed to assess the achievement of specific early developmental skills and to identify developmental delays or disabilities. A screening version is available. 

Administration: 1-2 hours; screening test, 10-30 minutes.

Test covers 5 domains: (1) Adaptive, (2) Personal-Social, (3) Communication, (4) Motor, and (5) Cognitive. It combines 3 parts: (1) structured battery of tests to complete with child, (2) interviews with parents or others who consistently interact with child, and (3) observations of child in familiar settings and situations. Items are scored on a 3-point scale ranging from never to performing skills at 90% level or greater.

User Qualifications: A Bachelor’s degree (BA, BS) in psychology, school counseling, occupational therapy, speech/language pathology, social work, education, special education or related field is required to purchase and administer the BDI or a certification in occupational therapy, physical therapy, or other medical fields (other medical fields include pediatrics, nurse practitioners, office nurses, visiting nurses, home health care workers for infants and young children, and Head Start specialists) and specific undergraduate-level training in one or more... Intelligence/cognitive assessment, Basic tests and measurement, Speech, hearing, and language assessment, Educational diagnostics or equivalent testing course, Developmental milestone assessment.

Materials Required: manipulative materials, item test book, record forms, stimulus book, and presentation cards; optional software. 

Scoring Procedure: Scores qualify the level of child’s performance in each of the 5 domains, identifying children who are developmentally delayed. Inventory yields domain or subdomain scored with age equivalents, raw scores, percentile ranks, and scaled scores. Conversion table is provided for sum of scaled scores. Subdomain profile and developmental quotient composite profile graphically demonstrate skills and delay areas. Results help determine intervention, appropriate programming, or type of instruction.

Psychometrics/Standardization: Reliability: Extensive documentation supported high level of reliability. Test-retest reliability varied with age, with correlation >0.90. Interrater reliability was 0.97 to 0.99.

Validity: Authors reported extensive developmental information demonstrating strong evidence for criterion, construct, and content validity was demonstrated by correlations with multiple standardized infant and child development, intelligence, and achievement tests. 

Strengths: It is available in Spanish.

Weaknesses: It is recommended that re-testing should be done after 3 to 6 months from the initial administration, and norms are not updated compared to the BDI2-NU version.