EDI Parent and Community Resources
The EDI is a population-level research tool.
The EDI is a population-level research tool. This means it measures developmental change or trends in populations of children and is not used to understand individual children. Although Kindergarten teachers complete the EDI on individual children, the results are not used at the individual level. HELP does not rank classes, neighbourhoods or school districts in any way.
The EDI is voluntary.
The EDI research study is voluntary. Once a school district has signed on, the schools, teachers, and parents and guardians are able to choose whether or not they participate. If a parent or guardian does not wish his or her child to participate in the study, they simply need to inform the teacher.
The EDI study uses passive consent.
Consistent with UBC research ethics board guidelines, the EDI collection process uses passive consent. Passive consent is common in population health studies because it is not often feasible to get the active consent of a large population. With passive consent, parents are fully informed on the nature of the project and the use of the data but they do not have to actively complete a consent form. HELP provides detailed introduction letters to all parents in 12 languages. Any parent who does not want their child involved has four weeks following the receipt of the letter to notify their teacher. Their child will be completely withdrawn from the study.
Personal Information
When teachers complete the EDI questionnaire they use a child's date of birth as an identifier so that they don't duplicate records for a student. Personal Education Numbers are used as a unique identifier to allow EDI data to be linked with other administrative data sets. Linking the EDI data to other databases provides insights into groups of children's health and answers important research questions. Postal codes are collected to facilitate neighbourhood level mapping of the results. To see an example of a map and to understand how EDI results are shared, please click here.
Safeguarding EDI data
Safeguarding data is a responsibility HELP takes very seriously. Please visit our Safeguarding Personal Information page to learn more about how HELP safeguards research data and protects the confidentiality and privacy of individuals.
EDI Fact Sheets
The Early Development Instrument (PDF)
Vulnerability and the EDI (PDF)
Privacy and the EDI (PDF) - Coming Soon
Parent Letters
Parent letters will be sent to all parents of participating classes - and posted here - in December. The letters include information about the EDI project as well as contact information should you have additional questions. They are available in twelve languages:
Arabic
English
Farsi
French
Japanese
Korean
Punjabi
Simplified Chinese
Spanish
Tagalog
Traditional Chinese
Vietnamese
