Factors Affecting Development of Children at Risk

The study aimed to determine the variables that characterizenormal and abnormal or questionable performance of Filipinochildren (n = 911) with histories of perinatal risk events (e.g.birth weight less than 2,500 grams, age of gestation less than37 weeks, instrumental delivery) on the Metro-Manila DevelopmentalScreening Test (MMDST), a restandardized Philippine versionof the Denver Developmental Screening Test. Children's agesranged between 2 weeks and 6 A years (53% male, 47% female).In addition to MMDST performance, data on 34 structural-situationalvariables were used in discriminant analysis. Thirteen variableswith significant discriminant function coefficients formed fiveclusters: a child-situational variable cluster, health variablecluster, mother variable cluster, socioeconomic variable cluster,and an age variable cluster.