Evaluation in the field of early childhood development: A scoping review

Abstract

Children’s early experiences and environments profoundly impact their development; therefore, ensuring the well-being of children through effective supports and services is critical. Evaluation is a tool that can be used to understand the effectiveness of early childhood development (ECD) practices, programs, and policies. A deeper understanding of the evaluation landscape in the ECD field is needed at this time. The purpose of this scoping review was to explore the state of evaluation in the ECD field across four constructs: community-driven evaluation, culturally responsive evaluation, evaluation capacity building, and evaluation use and influence. A comprehensive search of 7 electronic databases, including Canadian and international literature published in English from 2000 to 2020, was conducted. A total of 30 articles met the inclusion criteria. Findings demonstrate that some studies include aspects of a community-engaged approach to evaluation; however, comprehensive approaches to community-driven evaluation, culturally responsive evaluation, evaluation capacity building, and evaluation use in the field of ECD are not commonly achieved. This review will inform strategies for bridging evaluation gaps in the ECD sector, ultimately equipping organisations with the evaluative tools to improve practices, programs, and policies that impact the children, families, and communities they serve.

Do studies evaluating early-life policy interventions fully adhere to the critical conditions of difference-in-differences? A systematic review

“…8 To optimally inform policymakers on the effects of policy interventions in early-life years, reliable evidence obtained with robust evaluations is needed. 10 These evaluations can provide information on access, participation, equality and the quality of provision. While the strongest evaluation designs compare children and parents who receive programme services with a comparison group of children and parents who do not receive those services, sometimes this is not possible for practical or ethical reasons.…”

Detección de dificultades del neurodesarrollo en preescolares mediante pruebas de tamizaje.

“…Las evaluaciones mencionadas, requieren del aprendizaje sistemático y riguroso que implica tiempos largos de estandarización en la aplicación y calificación por parte de profesionistas de salud como psicólogos, pedagogos y terapeutas (Puinean et al, 2022;Thomas et al, 2020).…”