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The Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI) is a validated population-level measure of wellbeing in middle childhood. The MDI was designed in Canada, to provide schools and communities with pragmatic data to inform policies and practice. It gives children a voice, an opportunity to communicate to adults about what their experiences are inside and outside of school, and has great potential to provide educators, parents, researchers and policy makers with much needed information about the psychological and social worlds of children.
The MDI project is a collaboration between researchers from the , University of Western Australian, Menzies School of Health Research, the University of British Columbia, and policy makers from the ºÚÁϳԹÏn Department for Education and the Department of Education in Western Australia.
Researchers completed a pilot project in 2013 measuring the wellbeing of approximately 6000 children across ºÚÁÏ³Ô¹Ï and Victoria in the middle years of school in order to provide summary information back to policy makers, schools and communities about the health and wellbeing of their children. In 2014, the Department for Education and Child Development completed a second round of data collection involving almost 18,000 children, including those who participated in the 2013 research trial, allowing the accuracy of data to be explored further and to provide these schools with two data points.
Participating schools have now received their school report containing data on students' self-reported wellbeing. In 2013 the MDI received additional financial support through an ARC Linkage grant to establish the validity of the MDI in Australia, explore the international comparability of the instrument between Australia and Canada, and culturally adapt the MDI for Australian Aboriginal children, by leveraging off the MDI data collected.
