A study to evaluate the performance of black South African urban infants on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development III

South Africa (SA) needs a suitable tool to evaluate child development as no such tool ∄ at present. Well known standardised tests are designed in First World Countries but problems when used on different populations. The Bayley Scales of Infant , a tool designed and normed in the United States of America (USA) is to be the gold standard in infant assessment. The revised and updated, 3rd was published in 2006. No studies have been done on its use on populations other the USA. The USA and SA populations are very different and therefore may differently on developmental tests since previous research has shown that infants perform better than USA infants. main aim of this study was to use the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler III (Bayley-III) to evaluate the performance of a cohort of black urban infants in South Africa, in an effort to determine whether it is a suitable tool for on this population. The Hypothesis was that SA and USA children perform similarly the test. Other objectives included assessing whether gender or anthropometric influence performance. revised 3rd edition of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (Bayley-III) was to assess the performance of 122 black African infants at several urban clinics in , South Africa. The sample consisted of infants falling into four age categories; 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. SA scores were compared to USA norms. Scores were compared across age groups, subtests and sex. Height, weight and head circumference was also , converted into z-scores and correlated with test scores. the SA mean score was 103.4, which is statistically significantly higher (p=0.0007) than the USA mean of 100.For subtests, the mean score was 99.7 for the , 106.8 for the language and 103.5 for the motor subtests as opposed to 100 for USA. Therefore the results of this study showed that SA scores were statistically higher than the USA norms. Gender differences in scores for specific were found, indicating that girls and boys perform differently developmentally at ages. However this analysis was at subgroup level with individually small and further research is required to investigate this. Anthropometric indicators as height, weight and head circumference were found to have no significant with scores on the test, indicating that growth had no effect on development this population the overall SA mean (103. 4) was statistically significantly higher than the USA (100), clinically the difference is small when one considers the variability of . Developmental milestones can be reached within a range of months and vary considerably. The Bayley-III is therefore a suitable tool to use on this . More research is recommended to assess a larger more diverse group, all age groups for which the Bayley-III caters, as well as on all population in SA.