Monitoring Children's Development at Scale in Yunnan Province Using the Early Human Capability Index - a Psychometric Analysis : Early Childhood Education Quality Deep Dive in Yunnan, China (English)

Abstract: The Early Childhood Education Quality Deep Dive aimed to explore the status of children's early development in Yunnan, one of the least developed provinces in China, and the social and environment factors influencing outcomes for children. The Chinese version of the early Human Capability Index (eHCI) was used to collect information regarding early child development. This report sought to determine the suitability of using the eHCI to monitor children's development at scale in China. To do so, psychometric analyses using data from Yunnan province investigated the validity and reliability of the eHCI. Two samples were used, one cross-sectional (wave 1 2018 n=37,902, wave 2 2020 n=35,756) and one longitudinal (2018-19 n=970) with children ranging from 2-7 years. Analysis explored internal factor structure, internal and inter-rater reliability, as well as convergent, divergent, discriminant, concurrent, and predictive validity. Together with previous evidence in Shanghai, results demonstrate the eHCI is psychometrically robust and operating well to measure the development of children in both least and most developed regions of China. Not only can these findings inform scale up of population monitoring of child development nationally, they make a key contribution to the international evidence on measurement and monitoring child development using the eHCI.