Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #115584

rune Simeonsson, phd msph, FPG Child Development Institute, university of north carolina, CB# 8185, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8185, 919-962-2512, rjsimeon@email.unc.edu, Anita A. Scarborough, PhD, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina, CB 8185, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8185, and Kathleen M. Hebbeler, PhD, Center for Education and Human Services, SRI International, 600 Mockingbird Place, Davis, CA 95616.

Documenting developmental progress of children with disabilities is a challenge in large-scale studies where direct assessment is not feasible and evidence is based on parental report of attainment of selected milestones. Typical analytic approaches are of limited use given the restricted number of items and substantial sample variation in such studies. This paper describes the application of survival analysis as a promising evidence-based approach. Survival analysis assumes discrete events with defined starting and end points and no loss to follow-up attributable to outcome. Data for this study was drawn from the National Early Intervention Longitudinal Study in the form of maternal report of child milestone attainment at 36 months of 2672 children. The unit of analysis was the child's highest attained item assigned to one of six communication milestone intervals. A survival function was defined as the probability that the child would achieve expected developmental skills at 36 months, while the hazard function was the probability that the child would fail to achieve the expected skills. Results of the analyses, yielded survival functions for the total sample as well as for subsets, providing evidence of different milestone attainment patterns as a function of eligibility group, age at entry and etiology.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation; participants will be able to

• Describe challenges in documenting developmental progress of children in large scale studies
• Identify contributions of survival analysis to document developmental achievement of children with disabilities

Keywords: Children With Special Needs, Evidence Based Practice

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation