Assessment of early development: Kent Infant Development (KID) scale in the Czech population

Kent Infant Development (KID) Scale is a caregiver-completed developmental assessment method appropriate for infants aged 1 to 14 months. It contains 252 phrases that describe behaviors from five domains: cognitive, motor, la nguage, self-help and social. Two samples of healthy fullterm infants were examined by this method: 36 in fants (followed longitudinally in one-month-intervals from 1 to 14 months) and 695 infants (followed cross-sectionally - about 50 infants in each mont h). The results indicated that the KID Scale can be validly applied in our cond itions: Czech infants passed the majority of items (82,1%) at approximately the same age as American infants did. Therefore only small changes in the conversions of raw scores to developmental ages were done for the use of th is method in our conditions (KID-CZ). Age differences between Czech and Ame rican infants observed in 17,9% items are interpretable in terms of differe nt cultural conditions in both countries. High degree of reliability of the KID-CZ was ascertained. The educational v alue of the method was also appreciated: the completion of the KID-CZ taugh t the parents to become better observers of infant behavior and more attent ive to their development. Thus, the use of the KID-CZ in our conditions may enlarge the Czech reperto ire of methods to assess the behavioral development of infants.