Evaluating parental screening tool for developmental milestone in children under five years in rural Western Kenya

Background: An estimated 200 million children suffer from developmental delays, most in developing countries. Early diagnosis through screening is key to timely intervention. However, screening tools have not been assessed in developing countries. Objective: This study therefore assesses parental screening tool for evaluating developmental delays (PEDS; DM) in children under 5 years. Method: Across-sectional survey of randomly selected 870 caregivers to test sensitivity and specificity of developmental domains of children under 5 years was used. Results: Specificity above 89 % was observed in all the developmental domains and Sensitivity above 57% was observed in all the domains except for gross motor that had 35.8%. Negative predictive value was above 90% in all the domains while the positive predictive value was between 18% and 40%. In addition, an average scale reliability coefficient of 8.6 was observed and moderate likelihood ratio LR [5-10] in all the domains except for gross motor which had LR [2 – 5]. Conclusions: The PEDS; DM has high sensitivity and good reliability for all the developmental domains in children under 5 years and therefore it is adequate and can be used by primary health providers for initial testing to detect risk of developmental problems. However, the sensitivity should be improved for all the domains and specificity for gross motor domain.