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



Gladstone, Melissa ORCID: 0000-0002-2579-9301, Lancaster, Gillian, McCray, Gareth, Cavallera, Vanessa, Alves, Claudia RL, Maliwichi, Limbika, Rasheed, Muneera A, Dua, Tarun, Janus, Magdalena and Kariger, Patricia
(2021) Validation of the Infant and Young Child Development (IYCD) Indicators in Three Countries: Brazil, Malawi and Pakistan. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18 (11). p. 6117.

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Abstract

<jats:p>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.</jats:p>

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: child development, measurement, indicators, global health, validation, cross-cultural, cross-linguistic
Divisions: Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Life Courses and Medical Sciences
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 16 Jun 2021 08:42
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2023 22:34
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18116117
Open Access URL: http://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18116117
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3126550