Multilingual Assessment of Early Child Development: Analyses from Repeated Observations of Children in Kenya

Heather Knauer, Patricia Kariger, Pamela Jakiela, Owen Ozier and Lia C. H. Fernald
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Heather Knauer: University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health
Patricia Kariger: University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health
Lia C. H. Fernald: University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health

No 518, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: In many low- and middle-income countries, young children learn a mother tongue or indigenous language at home before entering the formal education system where they will need to understand and speak a country’s official language(s). Thus, assessments of children before school age, conducted in a nation’s official language, may not fully reflect a child’s development, underscoring the importance of test translation and adaptation. To examine differences in vocabulary development by language of assessment, we adapted and validated instruments to measure developmental outcomes, including expressive and receptive vocabulary. We assessed 505 2-to-6-year-old children in rural communities in Western Kenya with comparable vocabulary tests in three languages: Luo (the local language or mother tongue), Swahili, and English (official languages) at two time points, 5–6 weeks apart, between September 2015 and October 2016. Younger children responded to the expressive vocabulary measure exclusively in Luo (44–59% of 2-to-4-year-olds) much more frequently than did older children (20–21% of 5-to-6-year-olds). Baseline receptive vocabulary scores in Luo (β = 0.26, SE = 0.05, p

Keywords: school readiness; multilingual environments; language of instruction; BPVS; MDAT; PPVT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 83 pages
Date: 2019-10-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: Multilingual Assessment of Early Child Development: Analyses from Repeated Observations of Children in Kenya (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:518

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