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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1331423
This article is part of the Research Topic The Global Health of Orphaned and Disadvantaged Children View all 3 articles

A Comparison of Assessment Tools for Childcare Centers in High Versus Low Resource Settings

Provisionally accepted
HY V. HUYNH HY V. HUYNH 1*Eve S. Puffer Eve S. Puffer 1,2Jan Ostermann Jan Ostermann 1,3Andrew K. Weinhold Andrew K. Weinhold 1Meghan E. Lopez Meghan E. Lopez 4Melissa McGovern Melissa McGovern 5Kathryn Whetten Kathryn Whetten 1,6
  • 1 Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research, Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States
  • 2 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States
  • 3 Department of Health Services Policy and Management, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, United States
  • 4 School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
  • 5 School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States
  • 6 Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Studies suggest issues may arise when using childcare setting assessment tools designed for high-resource settings in low-resource settings to assess and improve the quality of care, including placing disproportionate weight on features of the childcare environment that may not be available or culturally appropriate within the low-resource context. This study compares a novel assessment tool developed in and for low-income and low-resource settings with a standardized "gold standard" tool developed for use in high-resource settings. The study included a randomized sample of 34 childcare centers in a low-resource context that provided care for approximately 918. Results suggest that the WCI-QCUALS assessment tool performed better at differentiating among childcare settings that were consolidated into the lowest rating on the ECERS-R. Further, the WCI-QCUALS was found to be a feasible, appropriate stand-alone tool for assessing the quality of childcare centers in low-resource settings. Additional refinement and validity testing in other countries and contexts will improve the understanding of how the quality of childcare across different contexts can be measured, and improved assessment of childcare quality in low-resource settings will enhance the ability to identify low-quality care that can be remedied to ensure appropriate care for vulnerable children.

    Keywords: Childcare centers, low resource settings, childcare assessment tool, Quality of childcare, quality of care, Child Development

    Received: 01 Nov 2023; Accepted: 01 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 HUYNH, Puffer, Ostermann, Weinhold, Lopez, McGovern and Whetten. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: HY V. HUYNH, Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research, Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, Durham, 27710, North Carolina, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.