Objective. Early childhood development (ECD) programs have demonstrated drastic improvements in survival, growth, health, and social productivity. An ECD pilot intervention was delivered to vulnerable populations of a Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinic in Des Moines, Iowa, to assess ECD outcomes and parental receivability in this setting. Study Design. In a randomized, single blinded control initiative, WIC group sessions of mothers (children aged 2 years and younger) were selected for pilot ECD intervention (37 participants) or control (36). Care for Child Development ECD course material was supplemented to intervention groups. Survey results were assessed with paired samples T-testing and by an ANOVA. Results. Pilot session receivability demonstrated significance in all areas relative to control: enjoyment, = 0.008; learning capacity, = 0.011; and participant sharing, = 0.023. Furthermore, the previously validated ECD intervention demonstrated significantly improved cumulative 1 month behavior outcomes following the intervention: = 0.006. Conclusions. The WIC setting provides an ideal environment for delivering ECD education beyond traditional counseling in nutrition. High receivability indices among parents demonstrate remarkable capacity for improvement and growth. The significance in receivability, as well as 1 month behavior outcomes, represents parents' overall readiness to enhance the home environment for their child if merely educated how.
Introduction:Early home support for language development is critical for later developmental progress. Paediatricians have the opportunity to identify families at risk of failing to provide this support in infancy but often lack simple tools to do so. This study explores the potential of a simple count of sociodemographic risk factors, a cumulative risk (CR) index, to identify families likely to need help in providing literacy support from an early age.Methods: CR scores were calculated for 308 families who completed the STIMQ and MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI) at 11-15 months) and 197 (64%) again at 23-37 months. Analysis of variance with linear contrasts examined the effect of CR on the STIMQ and the MCDI at baseline and follow-up.
Correlation analysis explored the relationship between STIMQ and MCDI.Results: At both baseline and follow-up, CR index showed a significant effect (p<0.006) on the STIMQ along with a significant linear trend for STIMQ scores to decrease as CR increased (p<0.05-0.005). No significant effects of CR effects on MCDI were observed at baseline or follow-up, whereas MCDI percentiles correlated significantly (p<0.03-0.001) with STIMQ scores (r=0.18-0.26.) at both times.
Conclusions:The CR index is a simple tool that can help identify families needing support for providing a language stimulating home environment in the first 2 years before long-term ill effects of sociodemographic barriers are established. K E Y W O R D S cognitive home environment, cumulative risk index, MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, StimQ, vocabulary development
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.