URBAN TURKISH CHILDREN'S PERFORMANCE ON THE DENVER DEVELOPMENTAL SCREENING TEST

Abstract

Normative data for 1176 healthy, urban Turkish children were analysed for sex and social-class differences in performance of the Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST). Sex differences were minor, and were similar to those found in other countries. Social-class differences, however, in contrast to findings in other DDST studies, were consistently in favour of the more advantaged children in all areas of functioning from about the age of 10 months. These differences became more marked with age, particularly in language and fine-motor skills. These findings indicate considerable cultural differences within urban Turkey and suggest that the use of only one set of norms may lead to misdiagnosis. Further, they question the predictive validity of this test for lower-class urban Turkish children, particularly for language and fine-motor tasks.