Besides gathering information about developmental milestones, medical history, and other general information, for the bilingual caseload, the most important information we need is their language use and exposure. For both simultaneous and sequential bilinguals, knowing their dominant and non-dominant language is one of the crucial steps in a bilingual assessment. This ensures that children’s overall level of language development will not be underestimated by assessing the nondominant language. In this first stage, important to gather information about cumulative and current exposure patterns of both languages to determine dominance and set appropriate expectations. This information is also necessary to determine how to interpret and analyze the assessment results and data. 

     Even though its recommended to obtain this information in both languages, this task can be difficult due to the lack of testing resources or the lack of clinicians or interpreters to cover all minority languages. Luckily, there are some assessment methods for which clinicians do not need to speak both languages. 

The most common method to obtain this information is using parent and/or teacher questionnaires. These can cover information about early milestones, language development history, language use, language exposure, and others.  Even though there are several published for available for clinicians, the most important questions for this section should be current language at home and cumulative exposure to the L2 (Paradis, Genessee, & Crago, 2021).

      Parent reports have shown to be a valid and reliable estimate of a children’s language development (Elbert, 2017). Two parent questionnaires that were designed for culturally and linguistically diverse populations are the Alberta Language and Development Questionnaire (ALDeQ; Paradis, J., Emmerzael, K., & Sorenson Duncan, T. (2010) and the Parents of Bilingual Children Questionnaire (PABIQ; Tuller, 2015). The ALDeQ was designed primarily for clinicians with limited abilities to examine a child's first language directly with the focus on gathering information on early milestones, first language abilities, behavior patterns, and family history. In a study conducted by Paradis, Emmerzael, and Sorenson (2010),  the Alberta Language and Development Questionnaire was found to be a "significant discriminator" between the typically developing and language impaired group and to discriminate and differentiate bilingual children with language differences vs. those with language impairments. 

       For the tools designed in the minority language, clinicians have to remember to get an interpreter if they don't have the skills to administer or analyze these assessments. Since these tools are recommended to administer orally instead of in writing, an interpreter will support in ensuring parents' comprehension while considering different levels of literacy in both languages (Paradis, Genessee, & Crago, 2021). An interpreter will also be able to translate questions, concerns, and any other given information during the administration of the questionnaire. 

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