This paper presents results of a preliminary study which evaluated medical birth data as potential predictors of developmental outcome, and developed and tested an instrument designed for this purpose. Forty low birthweight children, all of whom had experienced neonatal intraventricular hemorrhage, were evaluated at school age (66 months) on the Battelle Developmental Inventory (BDI) and results were correlated with neonatal risk factors and birth characteristics. Of 15 variables correlating with the BDI, the variables with the highest correlations with developmental outcome were the number of days spent in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the degree of neurological damage. These variables were found to be more predictive than other commonly used variables including birthweight, gestational age, and APGAR scores. The study also found that adding demographic and social variables only slightly increased the amount of variance explained in the outcome measure. Attached tables detail study findings. (Contains 19 references.) (DB)