About this session

Thursday, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Measuring Parenting Beliefs, Attitudes, and Practices in the Majority World

There is ample evidence that what parents know, think, and do each matter for young children’s developmental outcomes around the world. Nevertheless, rigorously measuring parenting processes remains difficult, particularly in Majority World countries. The field of child development currently lacks feasible, cost-effective measures for capturing culturally-specific manifestations of parenting across global settings.

In this panel, we introduce four new approaches for measuring parents’ beliefs, attitudes, and practices in the Majority World. Each of these approaches was designed with both cultural sensitivity and feasible implementation in mind. The first paper presents validity evidence on a brief observational measure of mothers’ cognitive and emotional support implemented during a book-reading task in rural Andean Peru. The second paper describes the process of developing and validating a comprehensive caregiver-reported measure of knowledge, beliefs, and practices in the same population. The third paper examines the reliability and validity of a new, observational measure of responsive caregiving in rural Pakistan. Finally, the fourth paper presents evidence on the reliability and validity of a father involvement measure in rural Kenya.

Collectively, these presentations reflect qualitative and quantitative evidence from three different continents. They will be led by presenters at multiple career stages (graduate school through mid-career) from four different academic institutions, collaborating closely with colleagues in the Majority World. The chair, an expert in early childhood measurement, will facilitate audience discussion related to the implications of this work for both understanding and supporting culturally-specific parenting in the Majority World.

Paper #1
Title	Measuring Parent-Child Interactions in Resource-Constrained Settings: Evidence from an Observational Tool Implemented in Andean Peru
Presenting author	Dr. Dana Charles McCoy, Ph.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education, United States

Paper #2
Title	Development of an Instrument to Measure Parenting Cognitions and Practices in High Andean Peru
Presenting author	Kristen Hinckley, M.Ed., Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basel and Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Switzerland and Peru

Paper #3
Title	Development, Reliability, and Validity of the Responsive Care Tool for Children 0-3-years-old in Rural Pakistan
Presenting author	Elizabeth Hentschel, Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, United States

Paper #4
Title	Development and Validation of a Father Involvement Measure During Early Childhood in a Resource-Limited Context
Presenting author	Berta Bartoli, M.Ed., New York University Steinhardt School of Education, Culture, and Human Development, United States

View all paper details

Session chair
Aisha Khizar Yousafzai, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, United States

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