Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare: Phase 6

Appendix C – Details of data collection instruments

Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ)

The Ages and Stages Questionnaire was administered as part of the keyworker observations.

Both the ASQ and SDQ questionnaires are widely used by Health Visitors across Scotland as part of their health reviews of pre-school children – the Child Health Programme.^[23] These questionnaires were also selected for inclusion in the Child Health Programme following an extensive review by academics and practitioners.^[24]

The ASQ is a structured assessment of a range of developmental domains to identify children at increased risk of developmental difficulties.^[25] The instrument includes 30 items split into five different domains: communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving and personal-social. The respondent indicates whether or not the child can complete the action or provide the response required by answering “yes”, “sometimes” or “no”. Each domain produces a summary score which can be used to indicate whether the child's development is on schedule, needs monitoring or requires further assessment. Whilst it is designed to be completed by parents, it was deemed suitable for completion by the child's keyworker at their ELC setting because it is informed by observation of the child.

The ASQ is intended to identify developmental delays and hence is specific to the age of the child. Three different versions of the questionnaire were used at Phase 4, depending on the child's exact age, while a further two different versions were used at Phase 6. While the ASQ has been carefully calibrated with a broad range of children so that we might expect the proportion demonstrating delayed development to be similar for each age group, we should be cautious in stating that any apparent changes over time identified by this study are real, rather than artefacts of the questionnaire or due to keyworkers being more familiar with the children than they were at Phase 4.

Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was administered as part of the keyworker observations.

The SDQ is a commonly used behavioural screening questionnaire designed for use with children aged between four and 16.^[26] The questionnaire includes 25 questions about a child's behaviour to which the respondent can answer “not true”, “somewhat true” or “certainly true”. Responses can be combined to form five different measures of the child's development, namely emotional symptoms (e.g. excessive worrying), conduct problems (e.g. often fighting with other children), hyperactivity/inattention (for example, constantly fidgeting), peer relationship problems (e.g. not having close friends), and prosocial behaviour (e.g. being kind to others). In addition, the first four measures can be combined into a “total difficulties” scale. Higher scores imply greater evidence of difficulties on each of the scales, with the exception of the prosocial behaviour scale where the reverse is true. In this report, recommended banded versions of the scales have been used to create the following categories: “close to average”, “slightly raised”, “high” and “very high”, with “very high” indicating multiple difficulties identified.^[27]

A slightly modified version of the original SDQ has been validated for children between the ages of two and four. This was used at both Phase 4 and Phase 6. As children are developing rapidly at this age, we may expect scores on the scales to differ for two-year-olds and three-year-olds. Thus, we cannot claim that changes in the scores over time identified in the data are due to the child receiving ELC rather than the natural development of the children over the course of a year. However, when the results are compared with those for children receiving the 600 funded hours of ELC pre-expansion (in Phases 1 and 4), we may be able to attribute a difference in the magnitude of any change to the increase in hours, if all other factors remain constant.

Short form Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS)

The short form of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale is a commonly used series of questions intended to measure wellbeing. Respondents are presented with seven statements about positive feelings and thoughts, and asked how frequently they have experienced them over the previous two weeks.

The scale is created by summing the frequency of responses for all seven items, with a score of 1 for “none of the time” and a score of 5 for “all of the time”. This provides a score of between 7 and 35. In order to make the data comparable with other surveys, the scores have to be “Rasch-transformed”.

Cut offs to determine “high” and “low” wellbeing can be identified from population norms. High wellbeing is defined as the top 15% of scores, in the range from 27.5 to 35.0, and low wellbeing as the bottom 15%, in the range from 7.0 to 19.5.

Details of the scoring are available from the WEMWBS website.

Home learning environment scale

Four items were used to create the home learning environment scale. These each related to the number of days on which certain activities between the child and parent were conducted. The scale was created by summing the number of days on which each of the four activities had occurred in the last week.

Cut offs to determine quartiles were created using data from Phase 2 of the study. This allows for comparison between phases. The bottom quartile included scores in the range 0 to 16, the second in the range 17 to 21, the third in the range 22 to 24, and the top in the range 25 to 28.

Parent-child warmth scale

The parent-child warmth scale used in the SSELC comprises the seven items that form the warmth dimension of the short form of the Mothers’ Object Relations Scale (MORS-SF). Details of the scale are available from the MORS website.

Each item was scored from 1 to 5, with 1 being “none of the time” and 5 “all of the time”. Summing the seven items created a scale from 7 to 35. Three groups were created of roughly equal size, based on Phase 1 responses. Because of the skewed nature of the data, the bottom tertile (a score of 7 to 31) should not be interpreted as “low warmth”, as many of the respondents in this group would have answered “often” or “all of the time” to each of the statements. The middle tertile was for a score of 32 to 34 and the top tertile a score of 35.

Confusion, Hubbub and Order Scale

The ‘Parental confidence and capacity and home environment’ section of the chapter on Parent Outcomes describes the ‘Confusion, Hubbub and Order Scale’ which was included to measure calmness and order within the household. The questionnaire included four statements, and respondents were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with each:

• It’s really disorganised in our home
• You can’t really hear yourself think in our home
• The atmosphere in our home is calm
• First thing in the day, we have a regular routine at home

To form the scale, the first two of the above statements were scored 1 to 5, with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree”; the other two items were scored 1 to 5 in the reverse order, with 1 being “strongly agree” and 5 “strongly disagree”. The sum of the four items created a scale from 4 to 20, with lower values indicating calmer households and higher values a greater degree of disorganisation / lack of routine. Tertiles were based on Phase 2 of the study, where the sample was representative of households with a four- or five-year-old child receiving funded ELC.

How to access background or source data

The data collected for this social research publication:

☐ are available in more detail through Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics

☐ are available via an alternative route

☒ may be made available on request, subject to consideration of legal and ethical factors. Please contact socialresearch@gov.scot for further information.

☐ cannot be made available by Scottish Government for further analysis as Scottish Government is not the data controller.