Participating programs are encouraged to consider additional optional assessments to more comprehensively measure child outcomes. While not required, if programs include these instruments, the data will be incorporated in the program's database. ODDACE will consider any assessments requested by a program. Optional recommended assessments are listed below.

Pre-Verbal Communication Assessment:

The Communication Matrix (Rowland, 2004) is an online communication skills assessment for children with significant additional disabilities who are pre-/non-verbal. It can be completed by a parent or a professional or both together.

Age Level: The Communication Matrix is appropriate for individuals of all ages who are at the earliest stages of communication. Communication abilities covered by the Matrix tend to emerge between 0 and 24 months of age in a typically developing child.

Spontaneous Language Analysis:

The Language Environment Analysis (LENA) System provides an automated analysis of a child’s language output and the language input received by the child based on an all-day recording captured by a small device worn by the child. It includes measures such as adult word count and number of conversational turns, which have been found to be predictive of later language outcomes (Gilkerson et al., 2018). Interested programs will be offered a 1-year trial with this device at no charge with the understanding that LENA data would be shared with the ODDACE database.

Age Level: Designed and validated for ages birth to 4 years

Criterion-Referenced Assessments:

The LDS (Watkins, Pittman, & Tonelson, 2020) assesses both receptive and expressive language and is specifically designed for children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Parents and interventionists complete this assessment together indicating which skills are present, not yet present, or emerging. Language items are appropriate for children using spoken language and/or sign language. 

Age Level: Birth to 5 years

The PAQ (Calhoun, 1987) assesses the development of a child’s play skills. Parents and interventionists complete this assessment together indicating which skills on the questionnaire the child has demonstrated independently and which have been observed after a child is presented with a model or receives help. Raw scores are converted to age scores based on the performance of a small sample of typically developing children.

Age Level: Birth to 3 years

Developmental Checklists:

The Cincinnati ASC (Choo, Creighton, Meinzen-Derr, & Wiley, 2005) is a 35-item checklist that uses a combination of a structured parent interview and clinician observation to obtain information about functional auditory skill development. Skills are evaluated in four areas: Detection, Discrimination, Identification, and Comprehension.

Age Level: All Ages

The Pragmatics Checklist (Goberis, 1999) is a parent-report instrument designed to examine a child’s use of 45 different pragmatic language skills. A variety of social communication skills are assessed in the following areas: 1) using language for different reasons (e.g., greeting, informing, requesting), 2) adapting language in response to the listener or situation, and 3) following conversational rules (e.g., turn taking, staying on topic, clarifying). Parents respond to each item indicating if their child demonstrates the skill or not and, if so, whether the child uses gestures, 1- to 3-word phrases, or longer sentences.

Age Level: 2 to 6 years

The Speech Intelligibility Checklist is a simple rating scale that offers parents and/or interventionists an efficient way to consider and document a child's overall intelligibility in casual communication situations.

Age Level: All ages

The Sign Vocabulary Checklist for Parents assesses parents’ expressive sign vocabulary development. Parents review a list of words selected from the vocabulary section of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (2006) and indicate which words they are able to sign without assistance. All of the signs on the checklist are appropriate to use when interacting with young children and are typically produced by hearing children in spoken language by 2½ years of age.

Age Level: Parents of all ages

Norm-Referenced Assessments:

The CELF Preschool-3 (Wiig, Secord, & Semel, 2020) is a norm-referenced assessment of receptive and expressive language skills, including measures of semantics, morphology, and syntax. It is administered to the child by an interventionist.

Age Level: 3 to 6 years

The EOWPVT-4 (Martin & Brownell, 2010) is a norm-referenced evaluation of expressive vocabulary skills. Children are asked to label illustrations of actions, objects, and concepts. This assessment is administered by an interventionist.

Age Level: 2 years to adults

The CDI (Ireton, 1992) is a norm-referenced assessment tool that can be completed by a parent or the child’s teacher or interventionist. The Letters subscale assesses pre- and early literacy skills such as knowledge of letters and words, including printing and early reading. The Numbers subscale evaluates pre- and early numeracy skills including knowledge of quantity and numbers from simple counting to solving simple arithmetic problems.

Age Level: 18 months to 6 years