The Early Development Instrument: Parent/Caregiver Info

Yes. We encourage parents/guardians to view the EDI questionnaire.

There is no direct involvement of children in the completion of the EDI questionnaire. Teachers fill out the EDI based on their experience and observation during the school year.

The EDI is not an individual assessment of your child, and your child’s EDI results will only be reported in a summary with other children. Your child’s Kindergarten teacher’s responses are private and confidential. The EDI is a research tool made for group comparisons only. The responses are combined into reports for each school and shared directly with school administrators. We recommend following up with your school principal or Parent Advisory Committee to access your school-level results. Community and neighbourhood level results are publicly available and can be viewed on our EDI Reports Page.

Yes. Participation in the EDI is voluntary and we respect your wishes to have your child removed from data collection. If that is the case please contact your child’s school or email the EDI team directly at edi@help.ubc.ca to withdraw your child.

The EDI project uses informed passive consent. With informed passive consent, parents/guardians are fully informed of the nature of the EDI project and the use of the information but are not required to actively complete a consent form. Instead, parents/guardians complete a withdrawal form or contact their child’s teacher should they not want their child to participate.

The EDI project aims to understand where systematic differences in well-being and healthy development occur, which requires data that are representative of the whole population in communities and the use of passive consent.

HELP has undertaken an in-depth review of the informed passive consent approach and found that this method can be used as long as parents/guardians have sufficient time to decline participation; translations of consent forms are available in languages representative of the parent/guardian population; Also, informed passive consent is used because the project is considered low risk, and provides beneficial community information. To learn more about the use of informed passive consent, please contact privacy@help.ubc.ca.

Once EDI questionnaires are complete, the names of the children are removed from the datafile. When the data are returned to HELP, the date of birth is used to calculate the child’s age and then the birth date is also removed from the datafile. The EDI also collects information about children’s postal codes and Personal Education Numbers. EDI results are often reported on children living in a certain neighbourhood or community. Collecting children’s postal codes allows us to group children based on where they live, which gives a better idea of where certain services or programs are needed. Personal Education Numbers can be used to link EDI data to other health and education administrative data sets for population health research purposes. Linking the EDI data to other databases provides insights into groups of children’s health and can help to answer important research questions.

To ensure personal information is secure, the Human Early Learning Partnership has strong measures in place and follows all rules, agreements, practices, and legislation for safeguarding data. To learn more about HELP data protection and the Five Safes’ framework for HELP research, please visit our Safeguarding Data page.

HELP follows the highest standards available, many of which are required by law. To ensure the privacy and confidentiality of individuals, all of HELP’s systems and processes meet or exceed the requirements of provincial and federal privacy legislation.

Educators, school districts, health professionals, early years service providers, and community members use EDI data in planning programs and services for children and families.

Schools and communities also use information from the EDI to understand how children are doing in key areas of development and to plan interventions. EDI information can support provincial investment, policy development, and program planning and evaluation.

Researchers use EDI data to address important questions and formulate new research to learn about social determinants of children’s health, development, and well-being. For more information, please visit our Data in Action page.

The EDI is collected to provide a snap shot of children’s strengths and weaknesses. The information collected from the EDI is used to create reports that are shared with educators, families, researchers and policy-makers across BC and the country, making a difference in the lives of children by informing policy and practice. It allows schools and communities to better understand where they should focus their resources to make the greatest positive impact.