Abstract

We describe development and testing of a new psychometric instrument, termed ERIC Early Report by Infant Caregivers (ERIC) for use in the NHS. ERIC will be used by parents to check for cognitive delay between 10 and 24 months,and takes parents under 1 h to complete, typically over the course of a week. There are games to play with the child, and questions about everyday things children do (e.g., looking for a toy). The result is a score for the child which may provide an early warning to health professionals of cognitive delay.

Research on ERIC is funded by NIHR, to establish its diagnostic properties in children at risk for cognitive delay. We are over halfway through an extensive testing programme to establish positive and negative predictive values, sensitivity and specificity of ERIC, against a gold standard for delay of standard scores ≤70 on the Cognitive Scale of the Bayley Scales, Edition III.

Data on over 200 children will be presented. To date, on the sample ERIC generates a good ROC curve, with sensitivity of 88% and specificity 70%.

Issues of testing and recruitment of this challenging cohort will be addressed.