Test selection, adaptation, and evaluation: A systematic approach to assess nutritional influences on child development in developing countries

Abstract

Background Evaluating the impact of nutrition interventions on developmental outcomes in developing countries can be challenging since most assessment tests have been produced in and for developed country settings. Such tests may not be valid measures of children's abilities when used in a new context. Aims We present several principles for the selection, adaptation, and evaluation of tests assessing the developmental outcomes of nutrition interventions in developing countries where standard assessment tests do not exist. We then report the application of these principles for a nutrition trial on the Indonesian island of Lombok. Sample Three hundred children age 22–55 months in Lombok participated in a series of pilot tests for the purpose of test adaptation and evaluation. Four hundred and eighty‐seven 42‐month‐old children in Lombok were tested on the finalized test battery. Methods The developmental assessment tests were adapted to the local context and evaluated for a number of psychometric properties, including convergent and discriminant validity, which were measured based on multiple regression models with maternal education, depression, and age predicting each test score. Results The adapted tests demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties and the expected pattern of relationships with the three maternal variables. Maternal education significantly predicted all scores but one, maternal depression predicted socio‐emotional competence, socio‐emotional problems, and vocabulary, while maternal age predicted socio‐emotional competence only. Conclusion Following the methodological principles we present resulted in tests that were appropriate for children in Lombok and informative for evaluating the developmental outcomes of nutritional supplementation in the research context. Following this approach in future studies will help to determine which interventions most effectively improve child development in developing countries.

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

“…Cross-cultural studies have shown biases in task performance based on different language structures (Jukes and Grigorenko, 2010), and different levels of stimulus familiarity (Callaghan et al, 2012; Zuilkowski et al, 2016). For example, in an attempt to address item bias when adapting a neuropsychological test used in Western cultures to be accessible for the Indonesian population, Prado et al (2010) changed a picture stimulus of a “bunny” to a “chicken.” However, despite these modifications, young children were still unable to complete the assessment successfully (Abubakar et al, 2008). This may have resulted from other age or language related biases that may have restricted children's participation, in that children might not have understood the task in hand.…”

Language Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Its study therefore has become in recent years an essential part of studies of child development outcomes following exposures and interventions in the prenatal period and infancy (A. Abubakar, Van Baar, Prado et al, 2010;Stoltzfus et al, 2001).…”

“…Other papers (this volume) (Baddeley, Gardner, & Grantham-McGregor, 1995;Greenfield, 1997;Holding et al, 2004;Prado, et al, 2010) have highlighted the dangers of insufficiently adapted or culturally inappropriate test instruments when examining non-verbal cognitive development. These dangers are even greater in the field of language development since the task that children have in learning their native language is radically different depending on the language itself.…”

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“…In particular, correlation, regression and factor analysis methods are applied to reject an inefficient test. The first two methods allow estimating the so-called statistical pure contribution of each task to the general variation of test scores, while the factor analysis is a good method for checking the homogeneity of the test (Bortz & Döring, 2005;Avanessov, 2009;Prado et al, 2010;Lim & Chapman, 2013). As a result, these methods indicate suitability, or unfitness of the considered test (Boesen & Palm, 2010;Xia, Liang & Wu, 2017).…”