Date of Award

5-2021

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Alice S. Carter

Second Advisor

R. Christopher Sheldrick

Third Advisor

Abbey Eisenhower

Abstract

Part C Early Intervention, which is a state and federally funded nationwide program, seeks to support children ages zero to three years old who demonstrate delays in developmental functioning or who are at-risk for developmental delays. The Battelle Developmental Inventory, Second Edition (BDI-2) is frequently used in Early Intervention (EI) to assess the developmental functioning of children across five domains—Communicative, Cognitive, Motor, Adaptive and Personal/Social—yet relatively little is known about child developmental profiles based on these domain scores. This study aimed to replicate and extend findings from the only known study (Elbaum & Celimli-Aksoy, 2017) that has conducted a latent profile analysis of child developmental profiles measured by the BDI-2 for children in Part C EI. The current study includes children (N=57,966) who were enrolled in one of twelve Part C EI agencies in the state of Massachusetts between 2011-2019 and completed a BDI-2 assessment at entry to EI. Findings suggest that the data is best classified into four latent classes, replicating findings of Elbaum et al (2017). Furthermore, and more notably, the pattern of BDI-2 scores (domain means for each class) found in Elbaum et al. (2017) was replicated in this study. This study extends previous findings by describing the extent to which child characteristics (sociodemographic factors, ASD diagnosis) predict class membership. Results show that for most class comparisons demographic factors significantly predicted class membership. The effects of age and ASD diagnosis were particularly large in the prediction of class membership. Our results suggest that 1) Battelle developmental profiles could be an additional indicator to improve identification of ASD risk in community settings and 2) profile membership could guide streamlined but person-oriented service receipt by tailoring interventions to specific child developmental needs. Continued research is needed to determine if profile membership is consistent across time and age.

Comments

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