Data Analyst The Hospital for Sick Children Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Background: Monitoring early childhood development provides a window of opportunity for early intervention. The Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) is a parent-completed screening tool used by teachers and clinicians to ascertain the neurodevelopment of children aged 0 to 6 years. Although the ASQ is internationally adapted, validated, and used in child development research, there is limited published data on ASQ in Canadian children, especially among children with low risk of developmental delay. Objective: To characterize the ASQ-3 in a cohort of young Canadian children recruited from primary health care settings. Design/Methods: We included children aged 0 to 6 years participating in TARGet Kids! (TK), a practice-based research network in Canada with over 11,000 children and their parents recruited from sites across Ontario and Quebec. At each well-child visit, parents were invited to complete questionnaires on sociodemographic information, child health and health behaviors, education and learning, and developmental screening including ASQ-3. Children who had at least one ASQ-3 report were included in this analysis. Raw ASQ data was cleaned. Scores were calculated for each domain and adjusted in case of missing responses. Mean and standard deviations of domain-specific ASQ-3 scores were described by age. Results: From January 2017 to April 2023 there were 1,492 ASQ-3 reports from 1,360 TARGet Kids! children. Reports spanned four ages (in months): 657 reports for 18, 226 reports for 24, 464 reports for 48, and 108 reports for 60. There was < 6% missingness across all five domains, for all four ages. Less than 25% of TK children fell within the threshold for professional assessment or the at-risk threshold across all ages and domains (Tables 1a-1e). In comparison to the published ASQ-3 domain scores, all mean domain scores across all ages (except 18-month problem-solving) were higher, and all domains had smaller standard deviations (except 18 and 24-month problem-solving) (Table 2). Domain score distributions tended to be skewed towards higher scores (Figures 1a-1e). A higher score indicates higher achievement in that domain and a lower risk for developmental delay.
Conclusion(s): The TARGet Kids! cohort provides a unique opportunity to understand the development of healthy young Canadian children using ASQ-3.
