Over the past several years, advocates across health, child protection, and education sectors have successfully pushed for including early childhood development (ECD) in the new millennium’s global policy agenda.  The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, for example, explicitly reference the importance of enabling children to reach their developmental potential through access to quality ECD programs and policies.  Despite this progress, a major barrier to fully integrating ECD with global policy is the lack of easy to implement measures of children’s outcomes, particularly early in life when brain development is occurring most rapidly and intervention may be most effective. 

The goal of the present paper is to validate a new, caregiver-reported measure of ECD that can quickly and cheaply quantify infants’ and toddlers’ developmental status across three domains, including their cognitive, socioemotional, and motor development.  This tool aims to fill several important gaps in the existing body of ECD measures by simultaneously 1) focusing on very young children (ages 12-36 months), 2) providing the opportunity for fast implementation in low-resourced settings, 3) aligning with ECD constructs that brain science suggests are most important for predicting later life outcomes (e.g., executive function), and 4) providing comparable estimates of ECD across countries.

We have used a multi-stage approach to develop and validate this tool.  In stage one, we developed a scientifically-anchored conceptual framework that outlines the core domains (e.g., cognition) and constructs (e.g., attention) of ECD.  In stage two, we generated a set of 82 items targeting our three domains based on review of the ECD literature, consultation with ECD experts, and analysis of existing measurement tools from low-, middle-, and high-income country contexts.  In stage three, we translated and piloted these items using cognitive interviews in rural Tanzania.  Results of this qualitative pilot were used to adapt items to be more easily understood by caregivers, more culturally neutral, and better in line with the underlying developmental construct.  In addition, a total of 12 items were removed from the measure that were found to be redundant and/or too difficult for mothers to understand.

The fourth phase of validation includes a quantitative pilot study of approximately 1000 Tanzanian caregiver-child pairs.  Full results of this pilot (which is currently underway) will be included in the final presentation, including results of factor analysis, item analysis, test-retest reliability, inter-rater reliability, concurrent validity (with a “gold standard” direct assessment of ECD, the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, 3^rd edition), and discriminant validity (i.e., differences in scores based on socioeconomic status, age, nutrition status, etc.). Next steps include further refinement and adaptation of items based on results of the Tanzanian pilot, further piloting in additional country/cultural contexts, and selection of a final short (15-item) and long (50-item) form for scale-up.  In the final presentation, we will also discuss implications of ECD measurement for setting a global policy agenda, monitoring progress toward goals, and evaluating the effectiveness and scalability of early intervention programs.