Test Review: Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning,Fourth Edition (DIAL-4),by C. Mardell-Czudnowski & D. S. Goldenberg

General Description

The Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning, Fourth Edition (DIAL-4), is an individually administered screening test of skills and associated rating forms designed to identify children ages 2 years 6 months to 5 years 11 months who may be in need of diagnostic assessment or intervention across five developmental domains. The screening domains align with the National Educational Goals Panel, National Association for the Education of Young Children and Head Start Domains and Standards. The test authors reject use of the DIAL-4 as a kindergarten readiness test. Rather, the test authors state, “Its sole purpose is to distinguish between children who may be at risk for academic failure and those who are not at risk” (Mardell-Czudnowski & Goldenberg, 2011, p. 5). Consistent with the authors’ intent for test use, the focus of this review is on use of the DIAL-4 to detect which kindergarteners may be at risk for academic failure upon kindergarten entry.

Specific Description

The DIAL-4 is designed to screen a large number of children in an efficient manner. The screening environment is typically a large space with multiple stations for each individually administered domain along with a registration area, a play area for waiting children, and an adult waiting and observation area where parents remain visually accessible to the child. Children cycle through stations of individually administered assessments in the areas of Motor, Language, and Concepts, and parent and teacher questionnaires may be used to assess Social development and Self-Help development skills. The site coordinator should optimally be a professional in special education, early-childhood education, or a closely related field. Operators, who administer performance areas, should be a professional or a para-professional with competence in administration and scoring of the DIAL-4 and with the ability to relate to young children. Volunteers are optional but can be useful when large numbers of children are being screened. Webinars and digital media are available which demonstrate how to set up, administer, and score the assessments (Mardell-Czudnowski & Goldenberg, 2011; Pearson Education, 2011).

The Motor scale assesses skills of throwing, standing/hopping/skipping, block building, thumb and finger coordination, cutting, copying, and name writing. The Concepts scale assesses the child’s ability to point to body parts, color knowledge, rapid object naming, rote counting, meaningful counting, concepts, and shape identification and sorting. The Language scale assesses the child’s knowledge of personal information, speech articulation, naming objects (nouns) and their actions (verbs), knowledge of letters and sounds, phonological awareness through rhyming and alliteration, and verbal problem solving. Items are scored on a scale of 0 to 4 depending on task and skill demonstration. Questionnaire items regarding Social and Self-Help development are addressed within the parent and teacher questionnaires wherein raters indicate whether a child can do the task “Most of the time” (2 points), “Sometimes” (1 point), or “Rarely or never” (0 points). Scores for all areas are summed individually, and then, a table is used to convert each total item raw score to the item weighted score. A pre-determined cutoff level is used to conclude whether the child may have a developmental delay that warrants follow-up. Typically, the same cutoff level is used for each scoring area and is consistent across all evaluators. Five cutoff levels are provided ranging from 1.0 to 2.0 standard deviations below the mean.

Following completion of the full battery, standard scores and percentile ranks are available for the following: Motor, Concepts, Language, DIAL-4 Total (which is a total of the three performance areas only), Self-Help development, and Social development (parent and teacher options). Evaluators in the performance areas also have the option to note the child’s behavior and verbal intelligibility. The child’s scores are compared with others using the pre-determined norm option. The designated screening team member consults the appropriate norms table in the manual to indicate whether the child has a “potential delay” or is “OK” in each developmental domain. A student who is identified with a potential delay may be referred for a more comprehensive evaluation.

Standardization

A total of 1,400 children were included in the performance areas (Language, Motor, Concepts) norm sample, and 700 parents and 700 teachers completed respective questionnaires assessing Self-Help and Social skills. All samples consisted of English-and Spanish-speaking children. Thirteen percent of examinees were Spanish-speaking which was consistent with the percentage of Spanish-speaking children in the United States. The sample size was divided equally between males and females. The standardization sample was spread across all major regions of the United States.

Reliability

The technical manual provides the internal reliability coefficients for each area broken down by age in 6-month intervals for the English version and 1-year intervals for the Spanish version. The DIAL-4 Total score has the highest coefficients by age, with mean split-half internal reliability at .95 for the English version and .96 for the Spanish version. Overall, most average coefficients were in the .80s and .90s for both versions, which were judged to be good.

Test–retest reliability studies are reported in the DIAL-4 manual. The DIAL-4 was administered twice to 93 participants in the English version sample and 81 participants in the Spanish version sample. Coefficients ranged from .64 (Motor/English version) to .95 (Language/Spanish version) which appears to indicate adequate to good stability over an unclear time frame as the between-test interval for the DIAL-4 was not located in the manual.

Indication of interrater reliability of test administration was not found in the manual; however, interscorer reliability studies were performed on subjective scoring items “to ensure that the scoring rubrics could be consistently applied by multiple scorers” (Mardell-Czudnowski & Goldenberg, 2011, p. 39). The average agreement ranged from .89 to .98, which is high.

Validity

Strong evidence for content validity is found in the manual for all areas. The areas of Motor, Concepts, and Language are moderately correlated across the DIAL-4. The correlations between the DIAL-4 Total and all performance areas are moderately high ranging from a low of .74 on the English and Spanish versions for Motor to a high of .90 for both Concepts and Language on the Spanish version.

Approximately 60 to 70 children were included in each comparison of the DIAL-4 with other tests including the DIAL-3, Early Screening Profiles (ESP), and Differential Ability Scales, Second Edition (DAS-II). Between-test intervals ranged from 1 to 25 days with a mean of 7 days using counterbalanced administration. The domains assessed on the DIAL-3 and DIAL-4 were the same; therefore, strong correlations were anticipated. As expected, correlations were moderate to high with the DIAL-3 and DIAL-4 Total scores correlated at .85, Concepts at .84, and Language at .75. Motor (.58), Self-Help (.66), and Social-Emotional (.66) had lower correlations which the authors indicate is most likely due to the “nature of these areas (e.g. motor skill performance in general shows considerable variability from one testing session to the next)” (Mardell-Czudnowski & Goldenberg, 2011, p. 61). The ESP Cognitive/Language profile correlated with the DIAL-4 Concepts and Language areas at .59 and .61 respectively, whereas cross area correlations were low (e.g., DIAL-4 Language and ESP Motor correlated at .21). The DIAL-4 Motor and ESP Motor had a low correlation at .35 reportedly due to task differences between the two tests (Mardell-Czudnowski & Goldenberg, 2011).

The DAS-II is an individually administered cognitive ability test designed to assess cognitive skills in children from 2 years 6 months to 18 years of age (Pearson Education, 2007). Because students who do poorly on a developmental screener are often referred for a more comprehensive evaluation, a fairly strong relationship between the DIAL-4 and the DAS-II would be important. The DIAL-4 Total score correlated highly with the DAS-II General Conceptual Ability at .73 indicating that the DIAL-4 is an adequate screener for detection of possible cognitive delays.

Additional evidence for validity is provided through matched-sample comparisons in children with clinical diagnoses including developmental delay, autism, physical impairment, and speech and language impairment. In general, moderate to high levels of sensitivity, specificity, and agreement were found across clinical samples.

Challenges to the Previous Edition and Response

Assel and Anthony (2009) requested the original DIAL-3 normative data from Pearson (formerly AGS) and reexamined the factor structure in the original data set that they found in a previous study (Anthony, Assel, & Williams, 2007). Suggestions for future revisions included removing “articulation” and “catching” items as they have poor statistical support for inclusion in both the empirically derived and theoretically derived models. They also commended the authors of the DIAL-3 for adding measures of phonological processing which has shown a critical role in literacy acquisition. However, they noted that the phonological measures lacked sensitivity in the lower range of ability. In response, although the latest revision (DIAL-4) has adhered to the five developmental domains as aligned with Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the “catching” item has been removed from the Motor domain as suggested by Assel and Anthony. However, the “articulation” item remains within the Language domain.

Advisory: DIAL-4 Language Area and IDEA Eligibility

The Language domain of the DIAL-4 includes domains that, if viewed separately and individually, could point to a possible IDEA-eligible disability. A deficiency in Articulation, Phonology, Expressive, or Receptive Language alone could qualify a child for IDEA services in the respective domain. However, the current scoring structure of the DIAL-4 combines these with other communication-related content areas for scoring purposes reducing them into a single Language score. This score reduction increases the possibility that a disability may be masked by the strengths of some items in the Language component reducing the sensitivity of the screener to detect language disorders.

Summary

Efficiency and cost-effectiveness of a screening program as well as a district’s confidence and ability to accurately and systematically locate children with a potential disability upon kindergarten entry are particularly salient factors in choice of a preschool and kindergarten screener. The DIAL-4 was theoretically designed to serve this purpose. The DIAL-4 is a screening assessment that may be used in different environments such as Head Start, school-based screening, daycares, and as a kindergarten screener to assess a child’s skills along the five developmental areas as defined by IDEA. Now in its fourth edition, the DIAL series has been quite popular, and there are few tools that so conveniently, inexpensively, and efficiently screen while also providing an engaging experience for the 2- to 6-year-old child.

Several aspects of the standardization process support use of the DIAL-4 as a kindergarten screener. There is strong evidence for the validity of test score interpretation, both theoretically and empirically. However, this is not perfect. Of particular concern is that item strengths within the Language domain could potentially mask severe deficits in other discrete language skills such as articulation, phonology/phonemic awareness, and receptive or expressive language through the use of a culminating Language area score. Missing a deficit in one of these critical areas could be problematic because several discrete language skills (articulation, phonology, receptive language, expressive language, letter and sound knowledge) are closely related to and predictive of later reading skills. This can be mediated, at least partially, by the use of well-trained screening staff—such as a Speech/Language Pathologist—for the Language component who may also consider the quality of the child’s responses and language skills and professional judgment regarding the child’s functional communication skills along with the DIAL-4 Language score to determine whether additional assessment is necessary. However, this has the potential to add significant cost to the screening process.

Another option for a team’s consideration is using a lower referral cutoff for the Language area which could prompt a referral at a lower threshold. This could be particularly useful because the child whose scores on the DIAL-4 Language may not warrant referral under IDEA based on the suspicion of a Developmental Delay, may be eligible for services under IDEA as a student with a Speech/Language Disorder due to deficits in articulation, or a language impairment such as expressive or receptive language (Department of Education IDEA Regulations, 2004).

Overall, the DIAL-4 provides valid and reliable measures for the screening of developmental delays in preschool and early kindergarten students’ developmental skills. Due to the screener’s efficiency, theoretical as well as empirical support for the scales, quality of the norming sample, and norming process, there are no major deficits identified. That noted, the scoring approach within the Language domain might be improved. As suggested previously by Assel and Anthony (2009), separating Articulation from the Language scoring may be warranted. This change may improve predictive capacity and reduce the chance that high skills in one speech/language domain could mask skills in another language domain low enough for potential IDEA eligibility. Improved discriminative capacity would be a welcome improvement to those who depend on the DIAL-4 for efficient and accurate instructional planning and referral.