The influence of sociodemographic factors and response style on caregiver report of infant developmental status

Abstract

Caregiver report is the most feasible way to assess early childhood development but is susceptible to the influences of response style and sociodemographic factors. In a sample of 571 caregiver-infant dyads (47.8% female; 48% White), we compared caregiver reports on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-Third Edition (ASQ-3) with reports on a novel, web-based assessment, PediaTrac™. Ratings on PediaTrac correlated with ratings on the ASQ-3 at all time points (2, 4, 6, and 9 months). Caregiver age, response style, and sociodemographic factors accounted for significant variance on both measures. Developmental reporting of early childhood skills is influenced by caregiver response style and sociodemographic factors. These influences must be considered in order to ensure the accurate identification of infant developmental status.

Rural‐urban differences in social and emotional protective factors and their association with child health and flourishing

“…Second, caregivers are the respondents to the survey, and thus results are dependent on their perceptions of the questions, and variables may be under or overestimated. Sociodemographic and cultural characteristics can impact caregiver‐reported health outcomes; however, the direction of the effect is unclear 62 . While our models did control for some of these sociodemographic characteristics, we acknowledge how our modeling strategy may not account for all unobserved confounders.…”

“…Sociodemographic and cultural characteristics can impact caregiver-reported health outcomes; however, the direction of the effect is unclear. 62 While our models did control for some of these sociodemographic characteristics, we acknowledge how our modeling strategy may not account for all unobserved confounders. We believe that understanding caregiver perceptions of emotional support and community and cultural assets is valuable, especially in the context of valuing the lived experiences of families and their perceptions of the systems in which they live rather than what the system believes to be providing.…”

Measuring Early Relational Health Using PediaTracTM in a Diverse Sample of Infant-Caregiver Dyads

“…The PediaTrac tool is based entirely on caregiver self-report and is thus subject to biases such as social desirability and response styles. [33][34][35] e232 PediaTrac TM Early Relational Health…”

Caregiver-reported development in term and preterm infants from birth to nine months of age: Psychometrics of the PediaTracTM social/communication/cognition domain.

“…A further limitation is the lack of an external criterion measure of social/communication/cognition in infancy that would allow for external validation of the current latent construct. We are currently addressing this limitation via ongoing investigations to provide preliminary support for convergent and discriminant validity relative to other “legacy” measures of social–emotional competence, social–emotional functioning, and communication (Connery et al, 2023; Lobermeier et al, 2022). Additional investigation is also needed to examine additional variables that may have impacted the precision of our estimates such as sociodemographic and contextual factors, and to explore predictors of the SCG domain other than sex and term status (Connery et al, 2023).…”

“…For example, caregivers with lower compared to higher levels of education report higher language abilities in their children (Feldman et al, 2000). PediaTrac's embedded "response bias" indices are currently being constructed so that we can better account for this variation in outcomes (Connery et al, 2023). A further limitation is the lack of an external criterion measure of social/communication/cognition in infancy that would allow for external validation of the current latent construct.…”