Development of symptomatic behaviour screening tool (SymBest) for early identification of developmental delays among children age 3-4

<p>This study aimed to develop a Symptomatic Behaviour Screening Tool (SymBest) for early childhood education (ECE) educators to identify symptomatic behaviours among children aged 3 to 4 years old. Three main objectives of this research were identified; the needs to development SymBes...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Shyielathy Arumugam
Format: thesis
Language:eng
Published: 2020
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Online Access:https://ir.upsi.edu.my/detailsg.php?det=8602
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Summary:<p>This study aimed to develop a Symptomatic Behaviour Screening Tool (SymBest) for early childhood education (ECE) educators to identify symptomatic behaviours among children aged 3 to 4 years old. Three main objectives of this research were identified; the needs to development SymBest, to develop SymBest based on experts opinions and to test the usability of SymBest. This is a design and development study based on the model of Richey& Klien (2007) with 3 phases. In phases (I), 434 ECE educators was selected for an online need analysis survey and the data was analyzed with descriptive statistics for mean score and percentage. In phase, (II) 18 experts were selected for constructs and items validation using the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM). In phase (III) to test the usability of SymBest, 21 ECE educators were selected and the Modified Nominal Group Technique was employed to analyse the responses. Data findings of phase (I) showed that educators are able to handle childrens classroom behaviours (M=3.75, SD=0.68), uses behavioural management techniques in classroom (M=3.09, SD=1.28), receives support moderately from the school climate to manage childrens behaviour (M=2.43, SD=1.25) and finally strongly agreed the needs of a screening tool for early identification of symptomatic behaviours (M=4.36, SD=0.60). Findings phase (II) reports, four constructs of child development is accepted because it has met the threshold value (d) = 0.2 and the experts' consensus = 70%. Further, the items are ranked in sequence based on the Fuzzy scores. Finally, in phase (III), all the constructs and items of SymBest has reached the agreement of usability according to the perception of the expert participants with group consensus = 70%. As a conclusion, the development of SymBest encourages early childhood educators to practice early identification of developmental delays among children based on their symptomatic behaviours. This study implicates that the availability of SymBest can enhance educators knowledge on the functions of behaviours among young children and suggest for medical referrals.</p><p></p>