Examining the associations between parent concerns and school-age children’s language and reading abilities: A comparison of samples recruited for in-school vs. online participation.

Purpose: To examine the relationship between parent concerns about children’s oral language, reading, and related skills and their children’s performance on standardized assessments of language and reading, with a particular focus on whether those relationships differed between children recruited for in-school versus remote participation. Methods: This study used data from a larger, longitudinal project focused on children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) and/or dyslexia. The “in-school” sample (n = 133) completed assessments in-person before the COVID-19 school closures, and the “remote” sample (n = 84) recruited via advertisements completed all assessments online. Parents completed a checklist of concerns regarding language and literacy development, attention and executive functions. All children completed norm-referenced assessments of language and reading.Results: The two recruitment strategies yielded samples that differed in racial diversity (higher in the in-school sample), caregiver education levels and financial resources (higher in the remote sample), and word reading test scores (higher in the remote sample). Parents in both samples reported higher levels of concerns about literacy skills than oral language skills, and the correlation between parent concerns about literacy and children’s word reading test scores was stronger than the correlation between parent concerns about oral language and children’s language test scores. We did not find higher level of concerns or a higher correlation between concerns and reading and language performance in the remote sample than the in-school sample.Conclusions: Researchers should be aware of the impact of different recruitment strategies on sample attainment. Referral models that rely on parent and teacher concerns about oral language to prompt a language evaluation may contribute to low rates of identification of children who meet criteria for DLD. Future research can consider parent concerns about literacy, attention, and executive functions as indicators of a need for language evaluation, especially considering the high comorbidity between language and other developmental disorders.