How is the EDI analyzed?
The EDI is a group-measure tool, and the data it provides should be interpreted at the level of school or neighbourhood. Postal code information is used at a group level to create provincial and neighbourhood-level maps of children’s state of development at kindergarten. Neighbourhood boundaries are locally defined by intersectoral coalitions. The questionnaire is scored by the five developmental domains. Over the years from 2000 to 2004, ‘vulnerability cut-offs’ were established for each domain of children’s development on the EDI. The ‘vulnerability cut-off’, for each domain, is the score below which 10% of the children surveyed in these years fell. In 2004, the ‘vulnerability cut-offs’ were fixed and used as a ‘baseline’ of the state of early child development at school entry. By creating a fixed cut off, we have now created a stable unit of comparison to show how vulnerability may change over time. A child is deemed vulnerable in a given developmental domain if their score falls be
