Citation

Nair D, Alonge O, Derakhshani Hamadani J, Sharmin Salam S, Islam I, Hyder AA. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017; 14(10): e14101130.

Affiliation

Department of International Health, International Injury Research Unit, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. ahyder1@jhu.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph14101130

PMID

28954441

Abstract

The Developmental Study is part of a larger intervention on "saving of lives from drowning (SoLiD)" where children were enrolled either into crèches (daycare centers) or playpens to prevent drowning in rural Bangladesh. Sampling ~1000 children between the ages of 9-17 months, we compared problem-solving, communication, motor and personal-social outcomes assessed by the Ages and Stages Questionnaire in the two interventions. After controlling for variables such as home stimulation in multivariate regressions, children in crèches performed about a quarter of a standard deviation better in total scores (p < 0.10) and 0.45 standard deviations higher in fine motor skills (p < 0.05). Moreover, once the sample was stratified by length of exposure to the intervention, then children in crèches performed significantly better in a number of domains: those enrolled the longest (about 5 months) have higher fine motor (1.47, p < 0.01), gross motor (0.40, p < 0.05) and personal-social skills (0.95, p < 0.01) than children in playpens. In addition, children in crèches with the longer exposure (about 5 months) have significantly higher personal-social and problem-solving scores than those in crèches with minimum exposure. Enrollment in crèches of very young children may be positively associated with psychosocial scores after accounting for important confounding variables.

Language: en

Keywords

Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ); Bangladesh; child development; cognitive; crèche; daycare; early childhood care (ECC); early childhood development (ECD); psychosocial