Parental Questionnaires as a Reliable Instrument for the Assessment of Child Language Development

Book excerpt: Language is crucial in child development. Therefore, general questions such as what are the possible challenges in language acquisition or such as how well the/my child is doing, are commonly present for researchers, clinicians, teachers, and parents. Parent-child interaction offers a privileged setting to observe children’s behavior in multiple communicative situations, which often is only available to the parents/caregivers. For this reason, within the broad range of methods used to assess children’s development, parental questionnaires are widely used being a non-invasive and inexpensive instrument to obtain information which is otherwise difficult to obtain. Data obtained with the many questionnaires covering various aspects of child development and communicative competence are equally relevant for basic research and everyday clinical practice. Development and use of parental questionnaires as well as data interpretation frequently require an interdisciplinary and cross-sector approach, bringing together developmental psychologists and practitioners. This interdisciplinarity is assumed but rarely addressed directly.