Launch of the standardised PARCA-R to assess cognitive and language development in two year olds

Published on Sunday, 11 August 2019 Post

This week's The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health includes an article describing standardised scores for the Parent Report of Children's Abilities, Revised (PARCA-R) questionnaire. The PARCA-R is recommended for routine use in the UK to screen for developmental delay in children born preterm and can be completed by parents in 10 to 15 minutes.

A new website has also been lauched featuring an online version of the questionnaire and a pre-programmed calculator for deriving the standardised scores.

Dr Louise Linsell at NPEU collaborated with colleagues at the University of Leicester and other universities to standardise the scores.

We can now quantify a child's developmental level relative to the UK population of two year olds, and identify advanced or delayed development. The standardised PARCA-R is freely available for parents to use and has been translated into 14 languages. It provides a reliable, cost-effective alternative to other developmental assessments that can be costly to administer.