Cultural adaptation of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, 3rd Edition for use in Kenyan children aged 18-36 months: A psychometric study.
The Kenyan Bayley-III works for research, but import the norms and you will misclassify kids.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers translated and tweaked the Bayley-III for Kenyan toddlers. They kept the play-based tasks but swapped pictures and words for local ones. A small group of 18- to 36-month-olds took the new version twice.
The team checked if scores stayed stable and if the test still measured cognition, language, and motor skills.
What they found
The Kenyan Bayley-III held up well. Reliability and validity stayed strong across all three areas. The study found positive results, so the tool can be used for research in East Africa.
How this fits with other research
Lin et al. (2015) did the same kind of work in Taiwan with the CSBS DP. Both teams translated, piloted, and re-checked a Western toddler tool. The steps matched even though the tests differed.
Samadi et al. (2021) also recalculated cutoffs when they brought the ADI-R to Iran. Like Hong et al. (2021), they showed that new norms are needed after cultural edits.
Narzisi et al. (2013) found the CBCL 1½-5 flagged ASD with very high accuracy in a case-control study. Hong et al. (2021) did not chase diagnosis, so the two papers do not clash; they simply answer different questions.
Why it matters
If you assess East-African toddlers, you now have a Bayley-III version that behaves well. Use it to track development or to group kids in studies. Do not treat the U.S. scaled scores as local norms; instead, compare raw change over time or build Kenyan norms first.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, 3rd Edition (Bayley-III) is frequently used in international child development research. No studies examine its psychometric properties when culturally adapted within the Kenyan context. AIMS: To culturally adapt the Bayley-III for use in Kenya and evaluate its validity and reliability. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Forward and backward translation, cognitive interviews, and a brief pilot of culturally adapted items were performed. This psychometric study was part of another study on children born to mothers with HIV in Eldoret, Kenya. One hundred seventy-two children aged 18-36 months were assessed for cognition, receptive/expressive communication, and fine/gross motor domains using the Bayley-III. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), inter-scale Pearson correlations, internal consistency, t-tests, and test-retest reliability were performed. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The mean age of children was 22.8 (SD 4.5) months old; 52.7 % (n = 89) were male. CFA revealed that both two- and three-factor indices had good and comparable fit. Pearson correlations were high between fine motor and receptive communication (r >0.70). Internal consistency was very strong for all of the subtests, with Cronbach coefficient alpha scores ranging from 0.88 to 0.96. Known groups/convergent validity was confirmed with stunting and parental concern for delays. Test-retest reliability was good and did not differ substantially across groups. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The Kenyan adapted Bayley-III is a psychometrically acceptable tool to assess child development. The scaled and composite scores should not be used to define Kenyan developmental norms, but it can be useful for comparing groups within research settings.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2021 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.07.006