Abstract
The objective of this research project was to adapt, translate and validate a developmental assessment instrument for use with young children who are visually impaired and who speak Arabic in the Middle-East. Developmental screening has become an established component of child health programs in many developed countries (WHO, 2012, NAECY, 2014, CEC, 2013). Yet according to Bishop (1991) "there are no developmental norms for blind children because of the low prevalence and because there is a lack of any regional or national database from which to draw inferences" (p.1). This project has the potential to make significant contributions to the field since its aim is to create a culturally and linguistically sensitive developmental assessment tool for all Arabic speaking children who are visually impaired or blind worldwide.
There is a great need for culturally valid and reliable developmental assessment tools that can assess children who are visually impaired and speak Arabic in the Middle East (Bornman et al, 2010). One approach is to translate already well-established measures from their source language into the target language(s), as the construction of a new instrument into a new language is difficult and time consuming and not recommended if adequate instruments already exist (McCartney, Burchinal, & Bub, 2006). This study was motivated by one of the authors who is blind and is the head of a new school for young children who are blind or visually impaired in Qatar. The conundrum for educational professions was that there were no tools to determine whether the young children who speak Arabic with visual impairments were meeting childhood developmental milestones within normal limits or rates.
Increased globalization has revealed the importance of cross-cultural adaptations of a various psychological, educational and health related instruments for use in countries and with languages other than the source language, typically English (Guillemin, 1993; Wiesinger, 1999). Thus there is a great need for Early Childhood Development (ECD) assessments particularly that are valid and reliable for culturally and linguistically diverse students. These developmental assessment tools can accommodate and measure the various domains of children with visual impairments and help to screen and identify those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (Bornman, et al., 2010). Early identification of developmental delays or differences is critical and can lead to improved child and family outcomes through early intervention (Heo et al., 2010). Unfortunately there is a dearth of research and tools to accurately and efficiently screen young children for early identification of developmental problems in children with vision problems and this is further exacerbated with reliable and valid tests in Arabic as well as other countries outside the USA (Heo, KH., Squires J, Yovanoff P., 2008). Our methods consisted of a review of highly recommended methodological approaches to translation, adaptation and cross-cultural validation of research instruments (WHO, 2012). We developed a flow chart and a coding-schemes for the inter-raters. Further analyses included validity and reliability, establishing threshold levels and item discrimination analyses. These analyses resulted in a high internal consistency in each age range for each category