Adaptable implementation 

The questionnaires can be mailed to the child's home; completed during a home

visit, in a physician's office/ waiting room; or completed during telephone inter 

views with parents.  A health plan may choose to implement a combination of

these strategies.

Easy scoring and administration

PEDS can be administered by a range of professionals and paraprofessionals, includ 

ing office staff.  New users only need to read the brief scoring and administration

guide to score and categorize members as high, moderate, and low risk for develop 

mental and behavioral/mental health problems. 

Accurate and effective

PEDS was developed out of four cross validation studies on a nationally representa 

tive sample of families.  Sensitivity ranges from 70 to 80 percent at all ages and

specificity ranges from 70 to 80 percent.

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Limitations

Providers at one BCAP Workgroup pilot site reported that the questionnaires

were often incomplete or inappropriately filled out.  For example, for the first

question ( Please list any concerns about your child's learning, development, or

behavior ) parents had responded with answers such as  Johnny is acting bad. 

This led them to believe that this screener would work better as an interactive

conversation tool, rather than an independently filled out questionnaire.

Some providers thought it would be difficult to determine what  normal  child

development was if they did not even understand  normal. 

The PEDS test requires refills which pose an additional cost.

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F.P. Glascoe and H. Shapiro,  Introduction to Developmental and Behavioral Screening,  March 2005, www.dbpeds.org/articles/detail.cfm?TextID=5.

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