Reflecting a burgeoning political interest in supporting young children around the world, global demand for reliable, valid, and scalable assessments of early childhood development (ECD) is on the rise. One of the more popular sets of tools for measuring the ECD of children under age 3 is the Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI), which includes both a long form for research and evaluation and a short form for population‐level monitoring. In this commentary, we describe the goals and limitations of the CREDI, research to support its use as a population‐level ECD instrument, as well as the major gaps in its evidence base. We also discuss how the work of Alderman and colleagues (in this issue) addresses some of these outstanding gaps, highlighting several critical areas for future research.

中文翻译：

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衡量儿童早期发展：关于照顾者报告的早期发展工具的考虑和证据

全球对可靠、有效和可扩展的幼儿发展 (ECD) 评估的全球需求正在上升，这反映了对支持世界各地幼儿的新兴政治兴趣。衡量 3 岁以下儿童 ECD 的一组更流行的工具是看护人报告的早期发展工具 (CREDI)，其中包括用于研究和评估的长表和用于人口水平监测的短表。在这篇评论中，我们描述了 CREDI 的目标和局限性、支持将其用作人口水平 ECD 工具的研究，以及其证据基础中的主要差距。我们还讨论了 Alderman 及其同事（在本期中）的工作如何解决其中一些突出的差距，突出了未来研究的几个关键领域。