Caregiver Perceptions of Child Development : A Cross-Sectional Study
Parents play a crucial role in the promotion of early childhood development, and understanding parental perceptions of early childhood development may help enhance parental investments early in life. To explore this question, caregivers were asked...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/514911569873214322/Caregiver-Perceptions-of-Child-Development-A-Cross-Sectional-Study http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32489 |
| Summary: | Parents play a crucial role in the
promotion of early childhood development, and understanding
parental perceptions of early childhood development may help
enhance parental investments early in life. To explore this
question, caregivers were asked to rank their child's
intelligence in comparison with other children in the
community, and the rankings were compared with
children's scores on an assessment of developmental
abilities across multiple domains. Using cross-sectional
data on children ages 16-42 months in rural Madagascar, this
paper documents the discordance between caregivers'
perceived early childhood development with an
interviewer-based measure of early childhood development.
The paper examines the determinants of caregivers'
under- and over-estimation of child development using
multinomial logistic regressions. The study finds that
caregiver perceptions of early childhood development in
Madagascar do not align consistently with an
interviewer-based measure. Approximately 8 percent of the
caregivers under-estimated and almost 50 percent
over-estimated their children's abilities. Better child
nutritional status, caregivers with a greater belief in
their influence on child intelligence, and higher
socioeconomic status were associated with lower odds of
under- or over-estimation of early childhood development.
Further research is needed to understand the common cues
that caregivers use to identify child development
milestones, to inform the design of parenting interventions. |
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