World Bank Document

of child development. There are many other early-childhood tests
that are used for different purposes—such as diagnosis, screening, re-
search, and planning of intervention services.
Tests for diagnostic purposes are administered to individual chil-
dren to obtain a comprehensive picture of a child’s function in a
number of areas. Tests for screening purposes are used to identify in-
dividual children who may be at risk for learning disabilities or devel-
opmental delays, or to evaluate the effect of a specific program.

As a population-based assessment, the EDI is not a diagnostic or screen-

ing tool. It must notbe used to label individual children, identify chil-

dren with specific developmental problems, recommend children for

special education, specify teaching approaches for individual children,

or measure the success or failure of a child’s preschool experience.

In countries such as Canada that have universal enrollment in
kindergarten, the EDI could be administered throughout a school sys-
tem. In many developing countries, however, less than 25 percent of
children attend kindergarten and perhaps 50–80 percent attend pri-
mary school beginning in 1st grade.

Measuring Child Development to Leverage ECD Policy and Investment 275

Physical and mental health

Social competence

Emotional maturity

Language/cognitive development

Communication/general knowledge

Neighborhood physical and

socioeconomic characteristics

Genes

Epigenetics

Environment Brain development

(genotype)

Risk Factors

Children’s biopsychosocial

development trajectories

Additive,interactive

Proximal

Distal

Pregnancy Infancy

(0–2 yrs)

EDI score

(5–6 years)

Pre-K

(3–4 yrs)

Exposure decreasesParents

with age

Exposure increasesPeers

with age

Figure 1. The Early Development Instrument (EDI): Capturing Brain Development

Source:Adapted from Tremblay 2006.