Design and Validation of Assessment Tests for Young Children in Zambia

Matafwali, Beatrice; Serpell, Robert

doi:10.1002/cad.20074

Cited by 22 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Methods bias includes differences in assessment administration, such as, the language and medium of delivery and stimuli used, that may favor one group over another (Matafwali and Serpell, 2014). This, in turn, may also impact on item bias, which refers to differences in observed performance despite equal abilities on a particular skill based on participants' cultural or linguistic background.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study

Pitchford

Outhwaite

2016

Front. Psychol.

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Assessment of cognitive and motor functions is fundamental for developmental and neuropsychological profiling. Assessments are usually conducted on an individual basis, with a trained examiner, using standardized paper and pencil tests, and can take up to an hour or more to complete, depending on the nature of the test. This makes traditional standardized assessments of child development largely unsuitable for use in low-income countries. Touch screen tablets afford the opportunity to assess cognitive functions in groups of participants, with untrained administrators, with precision recording of responses, thus automating the assessment process. In turn, this enables cognitive profiling to be conducted in contexts where access to qualified examiners and standardized assessments are rarely available. As such, touch screen assessments could provide a means of assessing child development in both low- and high-income countries, which would afford cross-cultural comparisons to be made with the same assessment tool. However, before touch screen tablet assessments can be used for cognitive profiling in low-to-high-income countries they need to be shown to provide reliable and valid measures of performance. We report the development of a new touch screen tablet assessment of basic cognitive and motor functions for use with early years primary school children in low- and high-income countries. Measures of spatial intelligence, visual attention, short-term memory, working memory, manual processing speed, and manual coordination are included as well as mathematical knowledge. To investigate if this new touch screen assessment tool can be used for cross-cultural comparisons we administered it to a sample of children (N = 283) spanning standards 1–3 in a low-income country, Malawi, and a smaller sample of children (N = 70) from first year of formal schooling from a high-income country, the UK. Split-half reliability, test-retest reliability, face validity, convergent construct validity, predictive criterion validity, and concurrent criterion validity were investigated. Results demonstrate “proof of concept” that touch screen tablet technology can provide reliable and valid psychometric measures of performance in the early years, highlighting its potential to be used in cross-cultural comparisons and research.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study

Pitchford

Outhwaite

2016

Front. Psychol.

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“…A Zambia-adapted version of the PPVT was considered but deemed not suitable for our main sample of children > 8 years old, as it was developed with item content only suitable for younger children < 6 years old. 33 This would have led to ceiling effects with our sample which enrolls adolescents as old as 19 years of age.…”

Section: Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorders in Zambia (HANDZ) Study: Protocol of a research program in pediatric HIV in sub-Saharan Africa

Adams

Mwanza-Kabaghe

Mbewe

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Approximately 10% of youth in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In Zambia, it is estimated that over 72,000 children have HIV infection, and despite access to combination antiretroviral therapy, many will experience HIV-associated neurocognitive deficits (HAND) encompassing cognitive and psychiatric sequelae such as global intellectual delay, executive dysfunction, and depressed mood. However, little is known about the neurocognitive profile of such children, the long-term outcomes and impacts of HAND, or the predictors and risk factors for HAND-related impairment. We have initiated the first-ever prospective, longitudinal study of neurocognition in children with HIV-infection in Zambia. Our overarching study goals are to validate cognitive and psychiatric testing tools in children with HIV infection in Zambia, and to determine if inflammatory biomarkers and brain imaging can prospectively identify children at high risk of developing HAND. This article outlines the study methods, highlights several challenges encountered in the initiation of the study, and offers solutions to these challenges.

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“…We cannot be exhaustive here, but recent examples include the Ages and Stages Questionnaire, adapted for Zambia and South Africa (Hsiao et al, ). Other Zambian examples include a non‐verbal reasoning test for rural children (Zuilkowski, McCoy, Serpell, Matafwali, & Fink, ), the Panga Munthu Test, and the Zambia Child Assessment Tool (Matafwali & Serpell, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of a South African Early Learning Outcomes Measure: A South African instrument for measuring early learning program outcomes

Snelling

Dawes

Biersteker³

et al. 2019

Child

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Background: Assessment of early childhood development programme effectiveness in South Africa is hampered by a lack of suitable measures that account for variations in cultural and socio-economic backgrounds and can be administered by nonprofessionals. This contribution reports the standardisation of the South African Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM), an instrument designed for population level monitoring of the developmental status of children aged 50-69 months and for evaluation of early learning programmes. Methods: The development of the ELOM was informed by South Africa's NationalCurriculum Framework from Birth to Four and its National Early Learning and Development Standards. ELOM items were drawn from reliable and valid instruments, particularly those used in Africa and other developing regions and were clustered in five domains: gross motor development, fine motor coordination and visual motor integration, emergent numeracy and mathematics, cognition and executive functioning, emergent literacy and language. The ELOM was standardised on a sample of 1,331 children aged 50-69 months, from five South African official languages and five socio-economic strata. Item Response Theory techniques were used to establish reliability, validity, and differential item functioning.Results: Confirmatory Factor Analysis established that ELOM domains are unidimensional and internally consistent. Items discriminate reliably between more and less able children and do not discriminate unfairly between children of the same ability from different language backgrounds. Socio-economic gradients were evident in children's performance. South African Early Learning Development Standards (ELDS) based on standard scores were developed and set at the 60th percentile of the sample standard score distribution.Conclusions: This research produced the first South African, age-validated population-level standardised instrument that can be administered relatively cheaply by trained non-professionals. This will facilitate the assessment of the efficacy of early learning programmes in enabling children to reach ELDS prior to entering Grade R and track progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4.2.

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Design and Validation of Assessment Tests for Young Children in Zambia

Cited by 22 publications

References 42 publications

Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study

Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study

The HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorders in Zambia (HANDZ) Study: Protocol of a research program in pediatric HIV in sub-Saharan Africa

The development of a South African Early Learning Outcomes Measure: A South African instrument for measuring early learning program outcomes

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