TRANSLATION AND ADAPTATION OF THE MIDDLE YEARS DEVELOPMENT INSTRUMENT. ROMANIAN VERSION

doi>10.24250/jpe/2/2021/AB

Abstract

The middle years’ age is a period of changes and challenges, due
to physical growth and motor skill development, cognitive
development, and socio-emotional development (Harold &
Hay, 2005). Cognitive development refers to how a person
thinks and perceives his or her world through the action of
genetic and learned factors. During middle childhood,
children’s vocabularies increase, and they also develop the
ability to express intentions. Socio-emotional development
refers to understanding and regulating emotions. Children’s
autonomy, their secure emotional development and
psychological well-being are strongly influenced by parenting
style and disciplinary practices (Harold, 2005). The purpose
of this paper was the translation, adaptation, and validation
of the Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI) from
English to Romanian. The aim was to assess the factor
structure of the scale. The methodology used was the
Exploratory factor analysis and we identified three
dimensions of the Instrument: Social and emotional
development, connectedness, and school experiences of the
MDI - Romanian version. We decided to validate this
instrument on a Romanian sample, because of the good
psychometric properties of the original scale, which
recommend it as a reliable tool and thus helps the process of
studying this age. Results suggest that the translated and
adapted instrument is adequate and valid for evaluating
aspects of cognitive and socio-emotional development of
middle years’ Romanian children.