Parental Reports on Children’s Language Development: Validation of the Slovenian CDI-III

Parental reports have been shown to be an informative, cost-effective, and non-invasive method of assessing children’s early communicative and language development (up to the age of 3 years). However, less is known about their applicability in older preschool children after the age of three. The main aim of this study was to present the validation process of the Slovenian version of the Communicative Development Inventories (CDI-III), which is based on the Swedish and Croatian versions. The study was conducted on a sample of 337 parents whose children were aged between 2;6 and 4;0. The results indicate a significant intercorrelation between all subsections of the scale and a clear trend of progress related to age. Among the demographic factors, mother’s education was found to have a significant influence on children’s scores on the Grammar and Metalinguistic Awareness subscales. Gender and the presence of siblings did not appear to be a significant factor. In addition, scores on the language subscales (Vocabulary, Grammar, Metalinguistic Awareness) correlated significantly with scores in the Comprehension and Production Scales of the New Reynell Developmental Language Scale . The study confirms that the Slovenian version of the CDI-III is a valid and psychometrically suitable instrument for further research into language development in Slovenian.