# Frequentyl Asked Questions **Can the CREDI be used to diagnose or screen children for early signs of disability or developmental delay?** **A:** No. The CREDI is not designed to provide information on individual children and therefore should not be used in this way. **Q: I am planning a study to evaluate the effects of an intervention program. Can I use the CREDI in my evaluation?** **A:** Yes, with some caveats. The CREDI Long Form can be used for the purpose of intervention evaluation, particularly if the use of more costly approaches (e.g., direct assessment) in the full sample is infeasible or impractical. At the same time, we recommend that, whenever possible, the CREDI should be paired with a more detailed and domain-focused measure that captures finer differences in the specific skill(s) that your intervention is designed to improve. If, for example, your intervention is targeting children’s language outcomes, we recommend that you pair the CREDI Long Form with a direct assessment of children’s language skills in at least a subsample of your participants. Doing so will help to reduce the possibility that you may fail to detect small but potentially meaningful effects of your program in at least one domain. Furthermore, triangulation of measurement (i.e., using multiple approaches to measure the same thing) is useful for addressing potential weaknesses in one approach versus another. Given that the CREDI is a caregiver-reported scale, using a direct assessment to address issues of social desirability (for example) may be useful. **Q: I am hoping to adapt some of the CREDI items so that they are more targeted to my specific population. Is that ok?** **A:** No. The CREDI Short Form and the CREDI Long Form have been validated as scales that are designed to be use exactly as they are written. You should not adapt the items or change them in any way unless absolutely necessary (see *Adaptation & Translation* section, above). If you want to add more items that are specifically relevant to your population, you may create your own items or borrow them from another tool. If you choose to do this, you should still score the CREDI using only the “core” items based on the instructions provided in the Data Management and Scoring Manual. If you want to integrate your additional items, you will need to validate your new scale on your own and be clear in publishing about the changes you have made. **Q: I want to use the CREDI, but I am only interested in using a subset of the questions. Can I pick and choose which items I use?** **A:** No. Once again, the CREDI Short Form and the CREDI Long Form are designed to be used as-is. You should not get rid of any items or you will compromise the properties of the scales. If, however, you are interested in adding items, you may do so with the understanding that you will need to develop your own separate scoring method and can no longer call your scale the CREDI. **Q: I recently translated the CREDI into a new language that is not currently on your website. Should I send this to you?** **A:** Yes! We are always looking for new translations! Please feel free to follow the instructions listed in the *Adaptation & Translation* section (above) and send us your new translation at the contact information listed below. **Q: I have a suggestion for improving the CREDI’s wording/usefulness/cultural relevance. Who should I talk to?** **A:** We are always eager to hear from users about their experiences with the CREDI and how we can improve it for the future. Please contact us at any time at the contact information listed below. **Q: I am looking for other measures of ECD that I might use instead of or in addition to the CREDI. Do you have any suggestions?** **A:** There are many wonderful tools available for measuring ECD in diverse global settings. You should always select your measures to best fit your specific needs, populations, and resources. We recommend several resources for identifying and selecting measures: - The World Bank Toolkit on ECD Measurement in LMICs: - The Inter-American Dialogue Report on Measuring ECD in the Americas: [http://www.thedialogue.org/resources/measuring-early-childhood-developm…](http://www.thedialogue.org/resources/measuring-early-childhood-development-in-latin-america/) **Q: What are your “next steps” for the CREDI?** **A:** The CREDI is an evolving tool that we hope to continue to update and refine. In particular, we are currently collaborating with ECD experts from the WHO, UNICEF, and a number of academic institutions to plan a future study using CREDI items and other ECD tools to develop ECD norms, standards, and benchmarks. Please visit our website frequently for updates! **Q: I want to use the CREDI Long Form, but I am only interested in one specific domain (for example, social-emotional development). Can I only use items that correspond to that domain?** **A:** Yes, but with important caveats. Under normal circumstances, the scoring procedure for the CREDI Long Form takes into account information from all domains when producing its individual scores for the motor, language, cognitive, and social-emotional domains. As such, there are several limitations to producing scores using anything less than the full Long Form tool. First, having missing items would significantly reduce the sample that can be scored using the CREDI package. Second, even though the scores produced when items from some domains are missing are highly correlated and show strong agreement with the scores using the full Long Form, our analyses suggest that they are not exactly the same. Particularly, as more domains are missing (i.e., items from other domains that do not overlap with the domain of interest), there is a greater discrepancy between domain scores, with differences that can be up to 0.3 SD relative to the scores that would have been produced with the full Long Form. As such, to maximize precision, we highly encourage the inclusion of all items from all domains when using the CREDI. For further details on this, please [click here](https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2435/2018/11/CREDI-Domain-Guidance-17-Oct-2018.pdf).