Measuring and understanding social-emotional behaviors in preschoolers from rural Pakistan

Abstract

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is widely-used to measure symptoms of common childhood behavioral problems that may lead to mental health difficulties. In a sample of 1,302 highly-disadvantaged mothers and their preschoolers, we evaluated the factor structure and reliability of the parent-report version of the SDQ in rural Pakistan. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the original structure of the SDQ was not appropriate for our data. We created conceptually- and empirically-coherent measures of children’s externalizing behavior problems and prosocial skills. Child and family correlates of social-emotional behaviors were similar to those found in other countries, supporting the validity of our new composites. Girls and children with more siblings had fewer externalizing behavior problems and more prosocial behaviors at four years. Further, maternal depressive symptoms and food insecurity were uniquely linked to more externalizing behavior problems at four years. In contrast, maternal education, home environment quality, and social-emotional skills at two years were associated with more prosocial behaviors at four years.

Household food insecurity and early childhood development: Systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Finch, Yousafzai, Rasheed, & Obradović (); Gill et al (); Hobbs & King (); Johnson & Markowitz (); Nagata et al (); and Whitaker et al ().…”

“…The systematic review included 15 studies from the US (78.9% of the studies). Only four studies were conducted in LMICs: Kenya (Milner et al, 2018), Pakistan (Finch et al, 2018;Obradovíc et al, 2016), and Bangladesh (Saha et al, 2010). In the majority of studies, HFI and ECD were measured at the same time or in an interval up to 24 months, and six studies did not present this information (Black et al, 2012;Drennen et al, 2019;Gill et al, 2018;Greder et al, 2017;Hobbs & King, 2018;Mickens, 2019).…”

Do parental stimulation practices modify the effect of child’s health status on early developmental risk? Findings from a hospitalized cohort

“…In fact, an intervention study found that it took at least 20 min for trainee therapists to engage parents with their child in a meaningful interaction owing to irritability of the child . Moreover, measurement of social-emotional skills has been identified as a challenge when completed through parent-report measure especially in a context where parental engagement is low (Finch, Yousafzai, Rasheed, & Obradović, 2018). A more accurate assessment would have been the direct observation of the interactions to ascertain behaviour-emotional concerns.…”

“…This was not possible in the current study due to a lack of resources and time given no external funds were available. Another limitation was assessing behaviour-emotional development concerns which can be more challenging to measure than the comparatively objective measure of developmental milestones (Finch et al, 2018) as behaviour and emotions can be context specific. Also, the item used to measure stimulation practices on caregiving measures the diversity of activities rather than the quality of interaction which would require direct observation.…”

Parental perception on screen time and psychological distress among young children

“…When assessed in Pakistani population, the reliability of this tool was greater when the scales were merged into three-factor subscales, as internalizing factors (emotional and conduct problems), externalizing factors (hyperactivity and peer problems) and prosocial scale. [ 16 ]…”