Assessing child development in challenging circumstances: a direct comparison of performance across remote and in person modalities of the IDELA

• In Event: Stronger evidence for the most vulnerable children: promising practices in assessing developmental outcomes in humanitarian settings and other vulnerable contexts

Proposal

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the way we conduct research. It also presented opportunities to expand the data collection tools at our disposal through adapting them to allow for remote use. Many of these adapted tools appear to have worked remarkably well, often at significantly lower cost (Authors, 2022). As in person services resume, we now have a new opportunity: to directly test adapted remote data collection tools against their in-person analogs. Such direct comparisons will inform in what contexts and situations in the future it will make sense to use newly created remote tools and when it is best – if possible – to revert to pre-pandemic in person assessments.
In this study, we directly (and casually) compare an adapted remote version of the IDELA with the traditional in-person IDELA. The remote version was piloted in Lebanon by our team during the pandemic and found (with minor adaptations) to perform well at assessing the four traditional domains of the IDELA. It was also administered at significantly lower cost than the in-person IDELA. One of the questions this raised among practitioners and researchers, in presenting these findings, was how we should think about these results in direct relation to the in-person IDELA and whether it might make sense, even in situations where the in-person IDELA is possible, to consider remote assessment instead when the cost savings are significant. In response to these questions, we decided to expand our study and directly compare the two versions of the IDELA using a sample of 600, 3-6 year-old children currently finishing early childhood/preschool programming in Lebanon. Children will be randomized into receiving either a remote version of the IDELA (conducted over video chat with them at home with a primary caregiver) or an in person version (conducted at their preschools). Exact items differ slightly between the two versions to accommodate the different modalities. We will then compare average performance by subdomain and across the full IDELA to assess any modality-caused differences in performance. We are also collecting information on child characteristics (i.e., age, gender, temperament) in order to assess if one modality or the other appears to work better for a particular type or age of child. For example, remote assessment may work better with older children but not as well with three year olds. Similarly, children slow to warm up to strangers might do better being assessed remotely with interactions mediated by their caregiver while those more readily able to talk to new people may perform similarly across the two modalities or even do better with the in person interactions.
Assessments will take place in the Akkar, Beqaa, and Tripoli regions of Lebanon in late August and September of 2022. Results will be presented with a focus on informing future use of the IDELA in studies of early childhood development.

Authors

• Lina Torossian, International Rescue Organization

• Kate Schwartz, Global TIES for Children, New York University

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Global TIES for Children, New York University