The Concurrent Validity of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory as a Measure of Young Children's Language Development

Abstract

The extent to which the Minnesota Child Development Inventory (MCDI), could be used to estimate levels of language development in 2-year-old children was examined. Fifty-seven children between 23 and 28 months were given the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development (SICD), and at the same time a parent completed the MCDI. In addition the mean length of utterance (MLU) was obtained for each child from a spontaneous speech sample. The MCDI Expressive Language scale was found to be a strong predictor of both the SICD Expressive scale and MLU. The MCDI Comprehension-Conceptual scale, presumably a receptive language measure, was moderately correlated with the SICD Receptive scale; however, it was also strongly correlated with the expressive measures. These results demonstrated that the Expressive Language scale of the MCDI was a valid predictor of expressive language for 2-year-old children. The MCDI Comprehension-Conceptual scale appeared to assess both receptive and expressive language, thus complicating its interpretation.