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

Melissa Gladstone, Gillian Lancaster, Gareth McCray, Vanessa Cavallera, Claudia R. L. Alves, Limbika Maliwichi, Muneera A. Rasheed, Tarun Dua, Magdalena Janus and Patricia Kariger
Additional contact information
Melissa Gladstone: International Child Health and Neurodevelopmental Paediatrics, Department of Women and Children’s Health, Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L12 2AP, UK
Gillian Lancaster: School of Medicine, Keele University, Keele ST5 5BG, UK
Gareth McCray: School of Medicine, Keele University, Keele ST5 5BG, UK
Vanessa Cavallera: Brain Health Unit in Department of Mental Health and Substance Use, World Health Organization (WHO), 1202 Geneva, Switzerland
Claudia R. L. Alves: Pediatrics Department, Medicine School, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte 30130-100, Brazil
Limbika Maliwichi: Department of Psychology, University of Malawi, Zomba P.O. Box 280, Malawi
Muneera A. Rasheed: Centre for International Health, Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, University of Bergen, 5007 Bergen, Norway
Tarun Dua: Brain Health Unit in Department of Mental Health and Substance Use, World Health Organization (WHO), 1202 Geneva, Switzerland
Magdalena Janus: Offord Centre for Child Studies, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4KI, Canada
Patricia Kariger: Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 11, 1-19

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: child development; measurement; indicators; global health; validation; cross-cultural; cross-linguistic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/6117/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/6117/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:11:p:6117-:d:569727

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().