Child Development: A Quick History of the Child Psychometric Measures DP-4

The Developmental Profile, Fourth Edition (DP-4), is a revision of the DP-3. The first Developmental Profile served as a set of psychometric measures for child functioning. Like other pioneering measures of child functioning, it evolved from the work of Alfred Binet.

Binet introduced the concept of mental age, regarding it as being different from chronological age. This helped identify children who were developing more slowly than other children. He developed a process for determining age norms from academic tasks and assessing the child completing them. Later on, the concept was adopted by Edgar Doll.

The Developmental Profile

The original Developmental Profile combined Binet’s idea of age norming with Doll’s interviewing techniques into a comprehensive and multidimensional assessment. The five areas of assessment became a requirement for evaluation in many governmental agencies.

The Developmental Profile, Second Edition (DP-II)

The Developmental Profile was refined in 1980 to create the DP-II. This revision was a well-received and widely used instrument. Outdated items were eliminated or modified, and those items that referred to milestones typically reached after nine years old were dropped.

The length of the inventory for the DP-II was reduced from 217 items to 186. Then in 1986, the assessment was updated with the addition of a computer scoring program.

The DP-3

The DP-3 was published in 2007 and is a more comprehensive revision of the original assessment.

It keeps the strengths of the DP-II and includes more. For instance, a better representative normative sample, item content, modern statistical scaling techniques, suggestions for interventions, and expanded computer scoring and interpretation were added. It also included updated item content, scale names, and scoring options.

The DP-3 provides smaller increments of age stratification so it can better capture the rapid periods of growth that happen at younger ages. It includes norm-referenced standard scores for an expanded age range of birth to 12 years, 11 months.

Plus, it also removes outdated items and adds items related to technology, as well as including remediation activities attached to each item.

The DP-4

The DP-4 is available for pre-order and will be published in 2020. It improves on all previous revisions by updating the normative sample and expanding the age range from birth to 21 years, 11 months.

It also includes the addition of two new forms, updated item content, a new scoring option, and additional options for comparing administrations.

The DP-4 was developed with the help of a survey to gauge the experiences of professionals using the DP-3. The survey included questions regarding settings and applications of the DP-3 and helped to identify clinical problems, items needing revision, and new content areas.

Respondents to the user survey included school psychologists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, and professionals in other clinical, medical, and educational fields. A majority of the respondents had ten or more years of experience working in these settings.

The user survey gave way to a pilot study of the new items along with the items that were retained. Included in the 307 items tested were 80 brand new items and 35 revised items.

Along with answers to the questions, respondents were asked how confident they were in their responses. Data from the pilot study was analyzed and used to standardize the forms and the final assessment.

In short, the DP-4 is the most comprehensive Developmental Profile yet and is based on one of the most trusted methods of measurements available.