"Survey of Wellbeing of Young Children (SWYC)": how does it fit for screening developmental delay in Brazilian children aged 4 to 58 months?

OBJECTIVE: To replicate the original normative study of the SWYC's Milestones Questionnaires for children in Brazil. Our goals were to compare the performance of Brazilian and North American children using this screening tool and to verify the reliability and validity of the Brazilian version.

STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional study with children aged 1-65 months and their guardians, recruited in southern Brazil. Parents were interviewed using the Developmental Milestones questionnaire, which contains 10 questions about cognitive, motor, social, and language abilities. Item response theory was used to examine item validity.

RESULTS: We interviewed 415 parents. SWYC provided the most information on the children's development between 10 and 30 months. The performance of Brazilian and North American children was quite similar when children are younger than 36 months old. Above 36 months, North American children performed almost all items earlier than Brazilians. Convergent validity was 0.73 and internal consistency 0.97.

CONCLUSION: The Brazilian version of the Developmental Milestones questionnaire presented acceptable measurement qualities that support the SWYĆs potential as a developmental screening tool. As we found important differences between North American and Brazilian children in achieving the milestones, especially among the oldest children, additional normative studies are needed.