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How the AEDI was developed

Development of the Early Development Index (EDI) in Canada

The EDI was originally developed in Canada at the Offord Centre for Child Studies, McMaster University, Ontario.

The development of the EDI in Canada included:

• Use of around 60% of the questions from the Canadian Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth.
• Review of the first draft of questions by groups of educators, early years professionals and academics with expertise in the field.
• Focus testing with four different groups of teachers.
• Extensive pilot testing in four phases:

Phase 1: Parents and teachers completed the EDI and the children were directly tested with two language tasks (32 children).
Phase 2: Teachers completed the EDI twice in a three-week period of time (112 children).
Phase 3: The EDI was then tested on a much larger group of children (16,583) to finalise the domains of the EDI.
Phase 4: The final instrument was then re-piloted on 53 children to explore inter-rater reliability and increase the sample for parent-teacher comparisons in order to evaluate whether parents and teachers give consistent answers to the same domains in the EDI.

As of 2008, the EDI has been completed on over 520,000 Canadian children.

The EDI results have been used to geographically map children's development in British Columbia. See British Columbia ECD Mapping Portal.

Development of the AEDI in Australia

The development of the AEDI has involved three stages:

Phase 1: Modification

Modification of the Canadian EDI required:

a) Testing the applicability of the EDI for Australia (2001-2003)
b) Refining the EDI instrument for use in Australia (April-June 2004)
c) Creating the "Australian Early Development Index" (May-June 2004)

Phase 2: Validation and Cycle 1 Testing (2004-2007)

In Phase 2 the AEDI was subjected to ongoing validation and testing.

a) Development and piloting of the AEDI web-based data entry system (July-August 2004)
b) Ongoing validation and testing the use of the AEDI in Australia (September 2004-April 2007)

Phase 3: Validation and Cycle 2 Testing (2007-2010)

a) AEDI/LSAC validation
b) Indigenous AEDI validation study
c) AEDI Change Over Time Analysis

From 2004 to 2007 the AEDI was completed in 60 communities around Australia. The AEDI was completed on 37,420 children in the first year of full time school by 2,157 teachers from 1,012 schools (both government and non-government).

Indigenous AEDI Study

The Indigenous Australian Early Development Index (I-AEDI) Study is being undertaken by the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, through its Kulunga Research Network and the Centre for Developmental Health, Curtin University. The I-AEDI Study is part of the national AEDI program conducted by the Centre for Community Child Health in partnership with the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.

Click here for more information on the Indigenous AEDI Study.