Examiner's Manual & Technical Report - Kaplanco.com

In 1974, the First Form of the LAP-D was developed under a supplementary grant from theOffice of Child Development. Relevant research was conducted in the winter of 1974 and springof 1975. The First Form was an experimental edition and many of its items were drawn from theLAP. It consisted of a mimeographed Examiner’s Manual and a preliminary assessment kit. Thefundamental rationale for the development of the First Form was the creation of an effective toolfor evaluating the progress of individual children’s development and for monitoring andevaluating instructional programs. Another fundamental goal was, and still is, the construction ofa measuring device sufficiently easy to administer, so that teachers and paraprofessionals coulduse it reliably and have confidence in the accuracy of the results.In 1975, the Second Form of the LAP-D was developed, using the First Form as the model undera grant from the Office of Child Development. The Second Form of the LAP-D consisted of acommercially produced and marketed assessment kit published by Kaplan School SupplyCorporation. The Second Form of the LAP-D was designed with the goal of implementing awidespread field-test. The field-test data and content validity data derived from reviews by earlychildhood professionals were used to improve the LAP-D. All analyses were conducted on asample of 239 children balanced by gender and race, but restricted to a one-year age range ofchildren between five and six years old (LeMay et al, 1977). Changes to the Second Forminvolved the elimination of certain items that were difficult to assess accurately and the additionof the developmental ages usually associated with each behavior. Data analyses contributedinformation necessary for evaluating the accuracy of the task sequences, the reliability ofindividual items, and the number of items required for an adequate correlation of test scores withchronological age.In 1977, the first edition of the LAP-D was developed with research and development fundingprovided by the Office of Child Development and the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped,under the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (LeMay et al, 1977). The first editionwas composed of five discrete scales and thirteen subscales. Based on the cumulative researchfindings in the area of early childhood development at the time (Gesell, 1940; Griffin, 1975;Hammill, 1971; Ilg & Ames, 1955; Lillie, 1975; Sanford, 1970;), the following developmentalareas were identified: physical development, psychomotor development, cognitive development,linguistic development, self-management, and social development. With the exception of socialdevelopment, an area not effectively assessed in a one-to-one standardized format, each of thesegeneral areas was incorporated into the first edition of the LAP-D. Also, items that signalmilestones in normal child development were included, relying heavily on the body of availableresearch findings (Bayley, 1969; Cattell, 1950, Frankenburg and Dodds,1969; Doll, 1965;Gesell, 1940; Terman, 1937) and numerous others who identified behaviors which appear to becharacteristic of children at given chronological ages.According to LeMay (1977), the sample size for this study was only 35 children because of timelimitations. Although this small sample size may have had limited the generalizability of theresults, the analyses accordingly restricted the number of predictors in the ANOVA and8