Benefits of ASQ

	ASQ gives busy professionals an effective and affordable way to systematically screen infants and young children for developmental delays in the crucial early years of life.

Many state and local programs have selected the Ages & Stages Questionnaires® (ASQ) as their developmental screening tool of choice. They have found that ASQ offers an attractive balance of reliability, convenience, affordability, and involvement of the family:

• ASQ gives reliable and accurate results. Though many screening tools are in use today, few have been as rigorously researched as ASQ. ASQ has repeatedly been shown to correctly flag children who have delays and exclude those who do not. Extensive and continuing testing has shown that ASQ has high rates of reliability, validity, and accuracy. | more on the research

• 		One of the biggest benefits of ASQ is social-emotional screening. A companion to ASQ, the Ages & Stages Questionnaires®: Social-Emotional (ASQ:SE) enables you to take an in-depth look at a child's social-emotional development. ASQ:SE has all of the same benefits as ASQ and arms you with a tool that can help you identify social and emotional problems in children as early as possible. | more on ASQ:SE

  ASQ is highly recommended. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Neurology, the Child Neurology Society, the First Signs organization dedicated to the early identification of children with developmental delays, and many others, rate ASQ as a high quality developmental screening tool. So do its users. | what users say
• ASQ saves you money. Everything you need to start screening—The ASQ User’s Guide and a master set of 19 questionnaires—is available for a one-time cost of $199. The questionnaires and the forms, letters, and activity sheets in the user's guide can be reproduced as many times as needed by a single site, and affordable licenses are available for organizations with multiple sites. | more on site licenses
• ASQ saves you time. The ASQ questionnaires take 10–15 minutes for parents to complete and 2–3 minutes to score. The questionnaires can be sent home in advance of a visit, taken on home visits, or filled out in waiting rooms to make good use of limited time. And because there is never a need to reorder the questionnaires, you'll never be stuck waiting for new forms to arrive in the mail.
• ASQ is easy to use. Programs overwhelming give ASQ high marks for being parent friendly and easy to use. The questionnaires are color-coded by age, written at a 4th–6th-grade reading level, and accompanied by simple illustrations to enhance understanding. | see sample questionnaire
• ASQ requires little training. Clear instructions are outlined in The ASQ User’s Guide, which addresses special situations such as how to score questionnaires with unanswered items and what to do when a child's age falls between the given age intervals. Paraprofessionals and office staff can easily learn how to use ASQ. For programs that want more training, instructional videos, on-site workshops, and annual seminars—including a "train-the-trainers" workshop—are all available. | more on training options
• ASQ is a parent-report tool. Studies show that parents’ observations of their children are very good predictors of developmental delays. Parent-report tools are far less costly than professional-observation tools, and they save professionals time. They also make use of valuable input from the family, fulfilling the spirit of federal mandates calling for the involvement of parents as partners in their child’s assessment and intervention. | more on parent report
• ASQ is available in several languages. In addition to English, the questionnaires are available in Spanish, French, and Korean. Other languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Somali, and Arabic, are in development. | more on other languages
• ASQ is the only tool that links to developmental milestones. Of the three parent-report tools cited as excellent by the American Academy of Pediatrics, ASQ is the only one that specifically tailors each questionnaire to an age group, enabling it to serve as a valuable tool for educating parents about their child’s development and for planning follow-up activities. | compare the three parent-report tools
• ASQ includes follow-up activities. Photocopiable activity sheets designed to help parents encourage their children's development are included in The ASQ User’s Guide and make it easier to educate parents. Even more photocopiable activities linked to age and developmental area are available in Ages & Stages Learning Activities. | more on the activities
• ASQ makes effective ongoing monitoring of development possible. Because of the rapid developmental changes in the early years, the American Academy of Pediatrics and others recommend that infants and young children be screened on a regular and periodic basis. Professionals can use each age-specific ASQ questionnaire at intervals to watch for and catch developmental delays that may not be detected in a single screening. | more on monitoring