Preliminary Report of Validity for the Infant Comprehensive Evaluation for Neurodevelopmental Delay, a Newly Developed Inventory for Children Aged 12 to 71 Months

Objectives: Early detection of developmental issues in infants and necessary intervention are important. To identify the comorbid con-ditions, a comprehensive evaluation is required. The study’s objectives were to 1) generate scale items by identifying and eliciting con-cepts relevant to young children (12–71 months) with developmental delays, 2) develop a comprehensive screening tool for developmental delay and comorbid conditions, and 3) assess the tool’s validity and cut-off. Methods: Multidisciplinary experts devised the “Infant Comprehensive Evaluation for Neurodevelopmental Delay (ICEND),” an assessment method that comes in two versions depending on the age of the child: 12–36 months and 37–71 months, through monthly seminars and focused group interviews. The ICEND is composed of three parts: risk factors, resilience factors, and clinical scales. In parts 1 and 2, there were 41 caretakers responded to the questionnaires. Part 3 involved clinicians evaluating ten subscales using 98 and 114 questionnaires for younger and older versions, respectively. The Child Behavior Checklist, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, In-fant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment, and Korean Developmental Screening Test for Infants and Children were employed to ana-lyze concurrent validity with the ICEND. The analyses were performed on both typical and high-risk infants to identify concurrent va-lidity, reliability, and cut-off scores. Results: A total of 296 people participated in the study, with 57 of them being high-risk (19.2%). The Cronbach’s alpha was positive (0.533–0.928). In the majority of domains, the ICEND demonstrated a fair discriminatory ability, with a sensitivity of 0.5–0.7 and speci-ficity 0.7–0.9. Conclusion: The ICEND is reliable and valid, indicating its potential as an auxiliary tool for assessing neurodevelopmental delay and co-morbid conditions in children aged 12–36 months and 37–71 months.