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

Summary/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.

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