| Sumario: | Population-based outcome monitoring could provide useful information about factors that differentially influence the developmental trajectories of deaf or hard-of-hearing children. A strong basis for population-based outcome monitoring is a coordinated, longitudinal data collection, and management infrastructure that includes quality local indicators, which in turn contribute to a larger state/province or national data infrastructure that supports programme evaluation and policymaking. Quality routinely collected data from early intervention programmes would contribute critical information to a coordinated database infrastructure for monitoring outcomes of children with hearing loss. The present paper explores, through a case example of a specialized early intervention programme for deaf or hard-of-hearing children in British Columbia, Canada, the strengths and limitations of utilizing routinely collected early intervention data for outcome monitoring purposes. A number of the sampling, missing data, and reliability issues were encountered with the locally collected database. We propose that a coordinated, long-term population-based longitudinal outcome monitoring approach requires further consideration and examination of the complex systems in which early intervention services are embedded.
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