Australian Early Development Index

Indicator Rationale

The Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) is a population measure of young children’s developmental progress as they enter school and comprised of five scores for each domain. The AEDI is based on the Canadian Early Development Instrument (Janus et al., 2007) and is a population measure of young children’s development based on a teacher-completed checklist and measures five developmental domains (Andrich and Styles, 2005):

• Language and developmental skills;
• Physical health and wellbeing;
• Communication skills and general knowledge;
• Emotional maturity;
• Social competence.

Ensuring children’s optimal physical, emotional and social health in the early years (0-6) has long lasting positive effects on their health, social and emotional well being and achievements throughout life (Government of British Columbia, 2006). The benefits include increased school success; increased future productivity; and reduced cost of health and public services.  Healthy physical and social development are essential, since deficits or delays may not be fully reversed as a child grows (Government of British Colombia, 2006). The AEDI offers communities the ability to measure the success of service provision to young children and their families and to target efforts in the most effective way.  The AEDI is a relative index allowing community comparisons across Australia  

Data Source

Australian Early Development Index

Measure

Proportion of children "on track" (26th-100th percentile) who reach the development targets on all five AEDI domains 

Proportion of children "developmentally vulnerable" (0-10th percentile) on two or more AEDI domains

References

Andrich, D., Styles, I. (2004). “Final report on the psychometric analysis of the Early Development Instrument (EDI) using the Rasch Model: A technical paper commissioned for the development of the Australian Early Development Instrument (AEDI)”. Murdoch University. 

Andrich, D., Styles, I. (2005). “Report on the analysis of the Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) using 2004 data”, Murdoch University. 

Janus, M., Brinkman, S. A., Duku, E., Hertzman, C., Santos, R., Sayers, M., Schroeder, J., & Walsh, C. (2007). The Early Development Instrument: A Population-based Measure for Communities, Offord Centre for Child Studies, Hamilton, Ontario.

Mary Sayers, Dr Sharon Goldfeld, Ms Melissa Coutts, Prof Sven Silburn and the Australian Early Development Index Partnership (2005). Paper presented at the 9th Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, "Families Matter" Melbourne 9-11 February.