scholarly journals Validation of the Infant and Young Child Development (IYCD) Indicators in Three Countries: Brazil, Malawi and Pakistan

Author(s):  
Melissa Gladstone ◽  
Gillian Lancaster ◽  
Gareth McCray ◽  
Vanessa Cavallera ◽  
Claudia R. L. Alves ◽  
...  

Background: The early childhood years provide an important window of opportunity to build strong foundations for future development. One impediment to global progress is a lack of population-based measurement tools to provide reliable estimates of developmental status. We aimed to field test and validate a newly created tool for this purpose. Methods: We assessed attainment of 121 Infant and Young Child Development (IYCD) items in 269 children aged 0–3 from Pakistan, Malawi and Brazil alongside socioeconomic status (SES), maternal educational, Family Care Indicators and anthropometry. Children born premature, malnourished or with neurodevelopmental problems were excluded. We assessed inter-rater and test-retest reliability as well as understandability of items. Each item was analyzed using logistic regression taking SES, anthropometry, gender and FCI as covariates. Consensus choice of final items depended on developmental trajectory, age of attainment, invariance, reliability and acceptability between countries. Results: The IYCD has 100 developmental items (40 gross/fine motor, 30 expressive/receptive language/cognitive, 20 socio-emotional and 10 behavior). Items were acceptable, performed well in cognitive testing, had good developmental trajectories and high reliability across countries. Development for Age (DAZ) scores showed very good known-groups validity. Conclusions: The IYCD is a simple-to-use caregiver report tool enabling population level assessment of child development for children aged 0–3 years which performs well across three countries on three continents to provide reliable estimates of young children’s developmental status.

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. e000747 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian A Lancaster ◽  
Gareth McCray ◽  
Patricia Kariger ◽  
Tarun Dua ◽  
Andrew Titman ◽  
...  

BackgroundRenewed global commitment to the improvement of early child development outcomes, as evidenced by the focus of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, highlights an increased need for reliable and valid measures to evaluate preventive and interventional efforts designed to affect change. Our objective was to create a new tool, applicable across multicultures, to measure development from 0 to 3 years through metadata synthesis.MethodsFourteen cross-sectional data sets were contributed on 21 083 children from 10 low/middle-income countries (LMIC), assessed using seven different tools (caregiver reported or directly assessed). Item groups, measuring similar developmental skills, were identified by item mapping across tools. Logistic regression curves displayed developmental trajectories for item groups across countries and age. Following expert consensus to identify well-performing items across developmental domains, a second mapping exercise was conducted to fill any gaps across the age range. The first version of the tool was constructed. Item response analysis validated our approach by putting all data sets onto a common scale.Results789 individual items were identified across tools in the first mapping and 129 item groups selected for analysis. 70 item groups were then selected through consensus, based on statistical performance and perceived importance, with a further 50 items identified at second mapping. A tool comprising 120 items (23 fine motor, 23 gross motor, 20 receptive language, 24 expressive language, 30 socioemotional) was created. The linked data sets on a common scale showed a curvilinear trajectory of child development, highlighting the validity of our approach through excellent coverage by age and consistency of measurement across contributed tools, a novel finding in itself.ConclusionsWe have created the first version of a prototype tool for measuring children in the early years, developed using novel easy to apply methodology; now it needs to be feasibility tested and piloted across several LMICs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Black ◽  
Doris Yimgang ◽  
Kristen Hurley ◽  
Kimberly Harding ◽  
Silvia Fernandez-Rao ◽  
...  

Abstract Objectives In low and middle-income countries, early child development (ECD) is associated with stunting, but the association with length-for-age z-scores (LAZ) is understudied. The objective is to examine whether the association with ECD among infants extends beyond stunting to LAZ and whether it is altered by nurturance or inflammation. Methods Sample: 513 infants (mean age 8.6 months, SD 2.2), 20% stunted (LAZ < -2) participated in a randomized controlled trial of micronutrient powder (MNP) in rural India. Following baseline, infants were re-evaluated at 6- and 12-months. LAZ was calculated from measured length, inflammation (C-reactive protein, CRP) from blood draw; nurturance from home observation (HOME Inventory), and ECD from Mullens Early Learning Scale (visual reception, fine/gross motor and receptive/expressive language). Linear mixed effects models were conducted, accounting for repeated measures and clustering, adjusted for child age, anemia, maternal education, household assets, and intervention. LAZ interactions with CRP and HOME scores were tested. Results LAZ was significantly positively associated with all ECD domains over time. HOME was positively associated with visual reception and expressive language (Table 1). HOME interactions were marginal for fine motor (P = 0.058) and significant for receptive language (P = 0.015). For HOME scores < -1 SD, LAZ was positively related to fine motor and receptive language, for HOME scores >1 SD, LAZ was not related to ECD (Figure 1). CRP was not related to ECD and CRP interaction was not significant. Conclusions The positive association between LAZ and ECD illustrates vulnerability prior to the threshold of stunting. Maternal nurturance is positively associated with multiple domains of infants’ ECD and attenuates relations between LAZ and receptive language and fine motor. Inflammation (measured by CRP) is not associated with ECD. Linear growth within normal and nurturant caregiving are needed to promote ECD. Funding Sources Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition, Nutrition International, Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science of the New York Academy of Sciences.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 957-958
Author(s):  
T. Berry Brazelton

This is an updating of Illingworth's original and highly successful textbook which was first published in 1960—and almost triennially since then. To bring a successful textbook up to date is a difficult job and the new edition is indeed an enlargement on the original text of 305 pages. I found the same delight as before in rereading Dr. Illingworth's comprehensive approach to development. He has been a leader in the field of pediatrics pressing for child development as an important part of a pediatrician's tools.


Author(s):  
Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski ◽  
Gunther Fink ◽  
Corrina Moucheraud ◽  
Beatrice Matafwali

While early childhood education has received increasing attention in the developing world in recent years, relatively little evidence is available from sub-Saharan Africa on its effects on child development and subsequent school enrolment. We use a prospective case-control design to evaluate the developmental impact of a community-based early childhood center in an urban area in Zambia. Comparing 40 children attending the center to 40 children not attending the center from the same community, we find that center attendance was associated with significantly better performance in an assessment of task orientation, and was also weakly associated with increased letter familiarity. We also observed higher performance among center students on tests of receptive language and pencil-related fine motor skills. These associations were, however, smaller and not statistically significant. We conducted a follow-up one year after the initial assessment, when children were seven years old and should have been in first grade. At follow-up, 27% of non-attendees were not yet enrolled in primary school, compared to just 11% of center students, suggesting that participation in early education encourages a timely transition into first grade.


BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. e035258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Fernandes ◽  
José Villar ◽  
Alan Stein ◽  
Eleonora Staines Urias ◽  
Cutberto Garza ◽  
...  

ObjectivesTo describe the construction of the international INTERGROWTH-21st Neurodevelopment Assessment (INTER-NDA) standards for child development at 2 years by reporting the cognitive, language, motor and behaviour outcomes in optimally healthy and nourished children in the INTERGROWTH-21st Project.DesignPopulation-based cohort study, the INTERGROWTH-21st Project.SettingBrazil, India, Italy, Kenya and the UK.Participants1181 children prospectively recruited from early fetal life according to the prescriptive WHO approach, and confirmed to be at low risk of adverse perinatal and postnatal outcomes.Primary measuresScaled INTER-NDA domain scores for cognition, language, fine and gross motor skills and behaviour; vision outcomes measured on the Cardiff tests; attentional problems and emotional reactivity measured on the respective subscales of the preschool Child Behaviour Checklist; and the age of acquisition of the WHO gross motor milestones.ResultsScaled INTER-NDA domain scores are presented as centiles, which were constructed according to the prescriptive WHO approach and excluded children born preterm and those with significant postnatal/neurological morbidity. For all domains, except negative behaviour, higher scores reflect better outcomes and the threshold for normality was defined as ≥10th centile. For the INTER-NDA’s cognitive, fine motor, gross motor, language and positive behaviour domains these are ≥38.5, ≥25.7, ≥51.7, ≥17.8 and ≥51.4, respectively. The threshold for normality for the INTER-NDA’s negative behaviour domain is ≤50.0, that is, ≤90th centile. At 22–30 months of age, the cohort overlapped with the WHO motor milestone centiles, showed low postnatal morbidity (<10%), and vision outcomes, attentional problems and emotional reactivity scores within the respective normative ranges.ConclusionsFrom this large, healthy and well-nourished, international cohort, we have constructed, using the WHO prescriptive methodology, international INTER-NDA standards for child development at 2 years of age. Standards, rather than references, are recommended for population-level screening and the identification of children at risk of adverse outcomes.


1989 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bruce Tomblin ◽  
Cynthia M. Shonrock ◽  
James C. Hardy

The extent to which the Minnesota Child Development Inventory (MCDI), could be used to estimate levels of language development in 2-year-old children was examined. Fifty-seven children between 23 and 28 months were given the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development (SICD), and at the same time a parent completed the MCDI. In addition the mean length of utterance (MLU) was obtained for each child from a spontaneous speech sample. The MCDI Expressive Language scale was found to be a strong predictor of both the SICD Expressive scale and MLU. The MCDI Comprehension-Conceptual scale, presumably a receptive language measure, was moderately correlated with the SICD Receptive scale; however, it was also strongly correlated with the expressive measures. These results demonstrated that the Expressive Language scale of the MCDI was a valid predictor of expressive language for 2-year-old children. The MCDI Comprehension-Conceptual scale appeared to assess both receptive and expressive language, thus complicating its interpretation.


1971 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 612-613
Author(s):  
HAROLD W. STEVENSON

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