Neuroescalita: child neuropsychological screening scale for the evaluation of attentional, memory and executive problems in Mexican children

Considering the high percentage of children and adolescents with developmental disorders, there is a clear need to build screening instruments that allow a quick and accurate assessment of the main processes that are affected in this population. So, the aim was to develop and obtain psychometric properties of a child neuropsychological scale for the evaluation of cognitive problems in Mexican children and adolescents. Primary caregivers of 728 children and adolescents with typical development, suspected developmental disorder or epilepsy, answered an online battery. Thirty items were developed and their content validity was evaluated by expert judgment. In Exploratory Factor Analysis, a 28 items-model with three factors explained 65.9% of the variance. Three factors were confirmed in Confirmatory Factor Analysis with 16 items: attentional, memory and executive problems; obtaining excellent fit indices (χ2[101] = 223.009; CMIN/DF = 2.208; NFI = .938; CFI = .965; SRMR = .0328; RMSEA = .058[.057-.068], <i>p</i> < .001). Reliability was high (α = .936, ω = .957), and construct/convergent validity were obtained with BRIEF-2 and PedsQL scales (.889 and .721). Significant differences were identified between subgroups with and without epilepsy (<i>p</i> < .001). Neuroescalita proved to be highly reliable and has multiple evidences of validity for adequate assessment of cognitive problems in Mexican children and adolescents.