Toward the testing of instruments to be used in identifying severely mentally retarded children

In the course of this workshop we have heard a variety of reasons why it is important to study the prevalence and incidence of severe mental retardation in developing countries. We have also heard that, although challenging, it should be possible to identify children with severe mental retardation in developing countries. A twostage case identification approach (screening followed by diagnosis) has been proposed, and Dr. Belmont and others have presented ideas about the kind of questions screening instruments might contain. In this paper I should like to outline a very concrete approach to how one might get such an instrument into the field in order to develop it further and to test its reliability and validity.