Measurement tools and indicators for assessing nurturing care for early childhood development: A scoping review

Abstract

Nurturing care encompasses five components that are crucial for supporting early childhood development: good health, adequate nutrition, opportunities for early learning, responsive caregiving, and safety and security. While there has been increasing attention in global public health towards designing and delivering programs, services, and policies to promote nurturing care, measurement has focused more on the components of health and nutrition, with less attention to early learning, responsive caregiving, and safety and security. We conducted a scoping review to identify articles that measured at least one nurturing care outcome in a sample of caregivers and/or children under-5 years of age in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We systematically searched five electronic bibliographic databases for peer-reviewed articles published from database inception until November 30, 2020. We first classified outcomes to their respective nurturing care component, and then applied an inductive approach to organize key constructs within each nurturing care component and the specific measures and indicators used across studies. We identified 239 total articles representing more than 50 LMICs for inclusion in the review. The majority of included studies reported a measure of nutrition (N = 166), early learning (N = 140), and health (N = 102), followed by responsive caregiving (N = 78) and lastly safety and security (N = 45). For each nurturing care component, we uncovered multiple constructs relevant to children under-5: nutrition (e.g., anthropometry, complementary feeding), early learning (e.g., stimulation practices, early childhood education), health (e.g., birth outcomes, morbidity), responsive caregiving (e.g., parental responsivity, parent-child interactions), and safety and security (e.g., discipline, inadequate supervision). Particularly for outcomes of early learning and responsive caregiving, there was greater variability with regards to the measures used, reported indicators, and analytic construction of variables than the other three nurturing care components. This study provides a comprehensive review of the current state of measurement of nurturing care. Additional research is needed in order to establish the most optimal measures and indicators for assessing nurturing care, especially for early learning and responsive caregiving.

Home-visiting Parenting Programs to Improve Mother-Infant Interactions at Early Ages: A Systematic Review

“…The Nurturing Care Framework is a roadmap that supports countries in developing and implementing evidence-based actions to ensure opportunities for young children's development and wellbeing (World Health Organization et al, 2018). In this sense, a stable familial environment sensitive to children's needs that provides protection, opportunities for learning, and responsive interactions should be at the core of interventions targeting child development and health outcomes (Bornstein et al, 2022;Britto et al, 2017;Jeong et al, 2022).…”

“…Nevertheless, there is still a need to understand how well the home-visiting parenting programs work and fit the population without clinical conditions. Furthermore, most studies have focused on child development and behavior, and few have explored the crucial role of mother-child interaction in child development, as highlighted by Jeong et al (2021) and Jeong et al (2022).…”

Auswirkungen eines hohen Geburtsgewichts auf die Entwicklung von Kindern im Vorschulalter

“…Im Gegensatz zu individuellen Therapie-und Fördermaßnahmen können präventive Interventionen ohne abwartendes Verhalten empfohlen werden. Anhand dieses Vorgehens ist neben der frühzeitigen positiven Beeinflussung der Entwicklung durch sozialkompensatorische Maßnahmen eine Umgehung einer Stigmatisierung benachteiligter Lebensumstände möglich [55][56][57][58].…”

Is home environment associated with child general intellectual abilities in middle childhood in high-risk settings? Findings from a rural cohort in Pakistan

“…The developers de ned home environment as "the quantity and quality of stimulation, support and structure available to a child" 20 [21]. A scoping review to identify nurturing care outcomes in LMIC for children under 5, found the HOME Inventory to be one of the most frequently tools used to measure responsive caregiving and early learning components [22]. The review also highlighted the tool to be multi-dimensional.…”