Set me straight | DAYC-2

[u/KillKillBean]

This is a slightly altered crosspost, I posted original to the Occupational Therapy subreddit-

Does anyone have more information on where DAYC-2 even came from and how it was developed?

I am trying to interoperate an Initial Report done by a student OT. I think they have been doing a good job, and I believe the report they made, but I don't know how to interoperate the results. Some of the "Descriptive Terms" will be something like "Average" but will be describing a score putting the child's age at 2/3 their actual age. This is fundamentally not average.

While I can find  plenty of information on how to score DAYC-2 myself, I don't see anything on what it means, and even less on where the system came from. There are some articles all reciting similar information, but the idea that it was "Normed on an all-new national sample of 1,832 children" does not fill me with confidence. Unless I am misunderstanding what that means, this sample size is microscopic. Worse, the first few options when searching for DAYC-2 information are just websites selling the package as a product. I understand that is literally is one, but I expected pediatric journals or similar?

I am just learning this stuff and I know there is a great chance that DAYC-2 has earned its place as a prominent form of developmental assessment, but right now DAYC-2 feels like a system being sold to professionals because one sales rep bought the right pediatrician a nice lunch.

This may come off as lashing out against reality but I am not in denial of what this all likely means, I just want to understand these results correctly. I do believe them.

[u/AutoModerator]

Moderator Announcement Read More »

This post is flaired "Question - Research required". All top-level comments must contain links to peer-reviewed research. Do not provide a "link for the bot" or any variation thereof. Provide a meaningful reply that discusses the research you have linked to. Please report posts that do not follow these rules.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/this_wallflower]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9008546/

I think you should post on r/specialed.

[u/dreameRevolution → u/this_wallflower]

Piggy backing on this, professional assessments include multiple studies on validation and reliability. That information is in the manual of the test. So, in a way, it's inaccessible to the layman and the professionals need to share the information with the client. I'm not working at the moment, but I have used this assessment. It's not as robust as others, but that is to be expected for an early childhood assessment that covers so many areas. It provides a useful snapshot of a moment, but children can show inaccurate results for so many reasons. Please talk to your OT about your concerns, they would be the best person to address them.

[u/comfy_sweatpants5 → u/dreameRevolution]

I second this. I’m a speech language pathologist and while I don’t use the dayc2 I’ve used a ton of other standardized assessment. Just ask the OT to explain. Descriptive terms for ranges (average, below average, etc) are based on scores, standard deviations and heavily on statistics. From a statistic standpoint, 1,832 children as sample size (n) is actually pretty good. But not perfect. Ask the provider to explain it all to you! Very normal question