I am planning a study to evaluate the effects of an intervention program. Can I use the CREDI in my evaluation?

Yes, with some caveats. The CREDI Long Form has been successfully used as an outcome measure in several evaluation studies (see Research page for details). 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.