ArticleJournal of health, population, and nutrition2018
A method to develop vocabulary checklists in new languages and their validity to assess early language development.
Article in Journal of health, population, and nutrition, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of improved complementary feeding and improved water, sanitation and hygiene on early child development among HIV-exposed children: substudy of a cluster randomised trial in rural Zimbabwe.BMJ global health · 2020Trial
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- Executive functioning in the first 24 months: A scoping review of the A-not-B task.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Developing an Open Multi-Domain Assessment Battery Using Laboratory Tasks for Children in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Neurocognitive outcomes in Malawian children exposed to malaria during pregnancy: An observational birth cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2021Observational
- Development and evaluation of the Ingwavuma receptive vocabulary test: A tool for assessing receptive vocabulary in isiZulu-speaking preschool children.The South African journal of communication disorders = Die Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir Kommunikasieafwykings · 2020Article
- Early child development in children who are HIV-exposed uninfected compared to children who are HIV-unexposed: observational sub-study of a cluster-randomized trial in rural Zimbabwe.Journal of the International AIDS Society · 2020Observational
- Multilingual assessment of early child development: Analyses from repeated observations of children in Kenya.Developmental science · 2019Article
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10 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundSince the adoption of United Nations' Sustainable Goal 4.2 to ensure that all children have access to quality early child development (ECD) so that they are ready for primary education, the demand for valid ECD assessments has increased in contexts where they do not yet exist. The development of early language ability is important for school readiness. Our objective was to evaluate the validity of a method to develop vocabulary checklists in new languages to assess early language development, based on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories.
methodsThrough asking mothers of young children what words their children say and through pilot testing, we developed 100-word vocabulary checklists in multilingual contexts in Malawi and Ghana. In Malawi, we evaluated the validity of the vocabulary checklist among 29 children age 17-25 months compared to three language measures assessed concurrently: Developmental Milestones Checklist-II (DMC-II) language scale, Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (MDAT) language scale, and the number of different words (NDW) in 30-min recordings of spontaneous speech. In Ghana, we assessed the predictive validity of the vocabulary checklist at age 18 months to forecast language, pre-academic, and other skills at age 4-6 years among 869 children. We also compared the predictive validity of the vocabulary checklist scores to that of other developmental assessments administered at age 18 months.
resultsIn Malawi, the Spearman's correlation of the vocabulary checklist score with DMC-II language was 0.46 (p = 0.049), with MDAT language was 0.66 (p = 0.016) and with NDW was 0.50 (p = 0.033). In Ghana, the 18-month vocabulary checklist score showed the strongest (rho = 0.12-0.26) and most consistent (8/12) associations with preschool scores, compared to the other 18-month assessments. The largest coefficients were the correlations of the 18-month vocabulary score with the preschool cognitive factor score (rho = 0.26), language score (0.25), and pre-academic score (0.24).
conclusionsWe have demonstrated the validity of a method to develop vocabulary checklists in new languages, which can be used in multilingual contexts, using a feasible adaptation process requiring about 2 weeks. This is a promising method to assess early language development, which is associated with later preschool language, cognitive, and pre-academic skills.
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