Purpose
‘Understanding Character Virtue Formation in Early Childhood and the Role of Parental Character Virtues and Cognitions in Promoting Children’s Character Virtues in the High-risk, Low-income Setting of Tanzania’ was an in-depth pilot study that aimed to test various untested survey tools and to adapt them for low-income settings, in rural Tanzania. To implement this study, EDI Global collaborated with a consortium of researchers from Yale University, the University of Chile, Stockholm University and the Norwegian School of Economics. The core activity consisted of conducting detailed quantitative interviews with young mothers aged 18–25 years who had a child between the ages of 6–36 months. Other household members, including fathers and household heads, were also interviewed as part of the survey, and a series of competency tests were conducted with target children aged 6–36 months. In addition, innovative techniques, such as electroencephalograph (EEG) and language environment analysis (LENA) technologies, were employed to collect measurements of the children’s brain development and word formation.
Action
As the data collection partner, EDI Global designed the sampling strategy, contextualised the survey modules and field protocols to adapt the new technologies to the study areas, and oversaw the listing and data collection efforts, including the administration of LENA and EEG measurements in resource-poor settings. The household surveys included a series of seven questionnaire tools, with a total of over six hours of surveys per household.
In order to verify the inter-observer reliability of some of the novel measurements deployed as a part of the study (i.e., Bayley tests for children’s cognitive development), additional surveys were also conducted with 20% of the target sample.
Impact
EDI Global tested various survey instruments and adapted them to the context of rural Tanzania, through the following activities:
- Listed a total of 4,641 households from across seven villages, to verify an eligible sample of young mothers
- Completed 210 mother surveys on child health, social networks, and cognitive skills, as well as collecting background information
- Completed 210 interviews with household heads, collecting household and dwelling-level information, including fielding a roster module to collect basic data on each household member and more general information about sanitary practices, food consumption, assets, and other aspects
- Applied recently developed techniques for measuring children’s cognitive development, including Bayley and Griffiths tests, with 210 children
- Recorded early language formation data using LENA devices from a sample of 199 young children
- Conducted tests of cognitive development using EEG readings from a sample of 60 young children
