2-101 - Developing and Validating Multi-Dimensional Early Childhood Development Measures for use Across Countries and Cultures

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

International research on early childhood development (ECD) has increased substantially since 2000, and is continuing to gain popularity with the inclusion of an ECD target in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Specifically, Target 4.2 proposes that by 2030 all children have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education. In following, the number of assessment tools designed to measure children’s learning and development, and their learning environments, has expanded rapidly. This panel contends that adequate attention to whether these news tools are indeed appropriate in diverse low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is critical, and puts forward suggestions for validating new tools.

One of the promising tools identified in the 2016 Lancet series on ECD is the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA), a multidimensional direct assessment (Black et al., 2016). This symposium will report on the multi-stage validation process, present results from advanced investigations into the psychometric properties and measurement invariance across subpopulations and countries from seven countries, and will present exploratory analyses of item functioning across 39 countries and over 20,000 children. Presenters will discuss the relationships found between home learning environments and child development, and the appropriateness of commonly used measures of home environment captured by caregiver questionnaires.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Lauren Pisani, UCL

Discussant

• Ross Allen Thompson, University of California, Davis

Individual Presentations

• IDELA development and validation - Presenting Author: Lauren Pisani, UCL; Non-Presenting Author: Iva Borisova, UNICEF; Non-Presenting Author: Amy Jo Dowd, Save the Children; Non-Presenting Author: Sharon Wolf, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Author: Peter Halpin, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Hiro Yoshikawa, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Alice Wuermli, New York University

• Testing the Sensitivity of the IDELA to Capture Contextual Factors of the Home Learning Environment - Presenting Author: Alice Wuermli, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Jonathan Helm, San Diego State University; Non-Presenting Author: Hiro Yoshikawa, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Anaga Ramachandran, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Nivida Chandra, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Amy Jo Dowd, Save the Children; Non-Presenting Author: Lauren Pisani, UCL; Non-Presenting Author: Paul Hastings, University of California, Davis; Non-Presenting Author: Ross Allen Thompson, University of California, Davis

• Exploring possibilities for a short-form IDELA tool - Presenting Author: Jonathan Seiden, Save the Children; Non-Presenting Author: Peter Halpin, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Lauren Pisani, UCL; Non-Presenting Author: Amy Jo Dowd, Save the Children