The Individual Growth and Development Indicator - Comprehensive Assessment Project (IGDI-CAP)

By Joan Baenziger, HDFS Graduate Student
10-26-07

Investigators:
Kere Hughes, Gayle Luze

Graduate Research Assistants: Jenna Coleman, Emily Edeker, Brianne Hart, Meredith Scott, Amanda Stein, Emily Worthington.

HFDS faculty members Gayle Luze and Kere Hughes, along with six HDFS graduate students, are conducting new research for the Institute of Education Sciences Services at the United States Department of Education. Their Special Education research project is entitled Individual Growth and Development Indicators: Comprehensive Assessment Protocol (IGDI-CAP).

The grant was written, in part, because early intervention programs around the country need more advanced assessment protocols to appropriately identify the needs of infants and toddlers, monitor their developmental progress and evaluate the outcomes related to intervention services (Carta, Greenwood, & Walker, 2003). The theoretical foundation for IGDIs lie in General Outcome Measurement (GOM), which involves identification of a few socially valid outcomes of interest (in this case areas of child development) and then developing measures to show progress toward those outcomes. GOM measures are used frequently to make immediate intervention decisions based on measured progress. Infant/Toddler IGDIs were developed at Juniper Gardens Children's Project at the University of Kansas in order to bring this approach to infant/toddler early intervention programs. Both Drs. Luze and Hughes were involved in the development and validation of IGDIs. The purpose of the IGDI-CAP project is to investigate the pragmatic viability of the Infant Toddler IGDIs assessments when integrated into a comprehensive protocol and test their reliability and validity when used as a package. There are a total of five IGDIs, which measure children's communication, motor, social and problem solving skills in addition to parent-child interactions.

group meeting In conjunction with intermediate education agencies in Iowa (Area Education Agencies; AEAs), their research team is learning how to train AEA early intervention teachers to administer the five IGDIs and make informed decisions about intervention based on their results. The IGDI protocol is being tested on two separate groups, a group with individual early intervention teachers and a group with teams of providers. These two different interventionist groupings will be used to test the utility of using IGDIs. Practical utility of the IGDIs will be measured by assessing fidelity of administration and coding (Kazdin, 1982) and use of the results as part of intervention decision making and planning.

Initial training and ongoing support to interventionists is being provided by graduate research assistants who are using a coaching model developed by Hanft, Rush, & Sheldon (2004). Training of the graduate research assistants is being done with the support of the HDFS Child Development Lab School where children and teachers are participating in a variety of assessments. Dr. Hughes commented that the research assistants are helping considerably because they bring their knowledge about developmentally appropriate practices to the table. The research assistants on the project are: Meredith Scott; Emily Edeker; Brianne Hart; Emily Worthington; Jenna Coleman and Amanda Stein. Finally, the best part of working on the project, from the team's standpoint, is that they get to play with the children while conducting research! For more information, go to the IGDI.ku.edu website!