The CDI Project

The SA Communicative Development Inventories (SA-CDIs) are a set of questionnaires for each official South African language that parents complete to tell us about their child’s language and communication.

The SA-CDI project will establish:

  • the first comprehensive overview of South African children’s first stages in language development
  • the first word-learning norms for children aged 8 to 30 months across the whole of South Africa
  • a free-to-use, anonymised online child language base, in collaboration with SADiLaR
  • a quick, easy and inexpensive checklist that can be used by professionals to assess children’s language

This project is collaborative research between Stellenbosch University, University of KwaZulu-Natal, North-West University, University of Limpopo, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, UNISA, University of Mpumalanga, University of the Western Cape and University of Cape Town, as well as ECD centres and NGOs. We are funded from a range of sources, including the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) supported by the Department of Science and Innovation, the National Research Foundation (NRF), the Newton Fund, and Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT).

Why is the SA-CDI project important?

There is a lack of valid and reliable tools to measure typical development and diagnose language delays in African languages. These cannot be developed without establishing the stages of language acquisition. Creating a locally relevant set of tools requires more than just translation of existing English tools.

It is essential that we establish norms for language development in early childhood. CDIs are parent report instruments that ask parents/caregivers to report on a child’s use of gestures, words and sentences. CDIs can measure language development from 8 months to 30 months. They are reliable and valid overall indicators of communicative development.

​There are CDIs for over 100 languages worldwide. These are used to identify stages in language development and establish national norms. Data from the CDI have formed the basis for developing linguistic and cognitive assessment and diagnostic tools in many countries.

Tools such as CDIs are suitable for contexts in which children are not used to clinical testing. Data are elicited in a culturally appropriate manner using information from parents/caregivers.

​Collecting information about children involves going out to different communities and working with local ECD practitioners and their children’s caregivers to gather information on language development.

Project progress

Phase 1

In Phase 1, the team set out to develop and adapt the long form of our CDI for the following languages: Afrikaans, isiXhosa, South African English, Sesotho, Setswana and Xitsonga.

Phase 2

In Phase 1, the team set out to develop and adapt the long form of our CDI for the following languages: isiNdebele, isiZulu, Sepedi, siSwati and Tshivenda.

CDI Validation (2022-2024)

After we finished adapting the short form, we were ready to move on to validation of our CDI. This validation included two types of data collection, one for infants and one for toddlers.

2022

In 2022, we set out to validate our Afrikaans and isiXhosa CDIs.

2023

In 2023, we finished up data collection for Afrikaans, isiXhosa and South African English. We also started data collection for the validation of our isiNdebele, isiZulu, siSwati and Tshivenda CDIs.

Norming (2024-2026)

We have started the preparations for norming our CDIs. The first language we will be norming is isiXhosa.

2025

In 2025, our team began with the next phase of our CDI Project; namely, collecting norms for all of the languages we have developed a CDI questionnaire for.

The first two languages we will focusing on, will be isiXhosa and Afrikaans. In the first few months of preparations, our team visited with NGO’s in both the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape who will be assisting with recruiting participants and data collection. With the help of statisticians from the USA as well as language experts, our team also finalized the isiXhosa CDI questionnaires for norming.