ORCID
- Michelle J. White: 0000-0003-0164-7677
Abstract
This article describes the adaptation of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for South Africa’s 11 official spoken languages. The CDI is a parent-report tool that measures early language development from 8 to 30 months. We developed cross-linguistically comparable CDIs, representing two distinct language families, West Germanic and southern Bantu, using a common protocol. We describe our approach to item construction and harmonization across languages and to obtaining sociodemographic information in different cultural settings. Issues such as language contact and variation, sampling, data collection, and quality control are discussed as well as item selection and instrument reliability and validity. This study highlights key issues for CDI adaptations and other instrument development in understudied contexts and discusses the theoretical implications of adding this diverse set of cross-linguistically comparable languages for early child language research.
DOI Link
Publication Date
2025-02-01
Publication Title
Developmental Psychology
ISSN
0012-1649
Acceptance Date
2024-12-11
Deposit Date
2025-05-15
Funding
This study was made possible with the support of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR). SADiLaR is a research infrastructure established by the Department of Science and Innovation of the South African government as part of the South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap. Additional funding came from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grants HSD170602236563 and CPRR129303). Preliminarywork for this research was supported by theBritish Academy Newton Fund (Grant NG160093) and the National Research Foundation of South Africa/Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (Grant NRF/STINT160918188417). The authors thank the communities, fieldworkers, and participants. The authors also thank the MacArthur\u2013Bates CDI Advisory Board for granting them permission to adapt theMB-CDI for these languages.Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors.
Additional Links
Keywords
adaptation, cross-linguistic, language acquisition, MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory, South Africa
Recommended Citation
Brookes, H., Southwood, F., Mössmer, M., Makaure, P., White, M., Coetsee, C., Yalala, S., Kruger, H., Ndhambi, M., Ndlangamandla, S., Bhuda, M., Brink, N., Buthelezi, N., Jiyana, W., Khumalo, F., Ludidi, B., Matfunjwa, M., Miriri, L., & Skosana, N. (2025) 'Instrument adaptation for measuring early child language development across multilingual and sociocultural diverse settings', Developmental Psychology, . Available at: 10.1037/dev0001935
