Department of Public Health, North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Armed Forces Medical College, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Front Public Health. 2023 Jun 28;11:1209068. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1209068. eCollection 2023.
Knowing the relationship between the factors related to home environment and early childhood development (ECD) in Bangladeshi children aged 3 to 4 years would help to find out appropriate interventions for the children with lower ECD outcomes. Therefore, we aimed to understand the relationship between the home environment factors and ECD in rural Bangladeshi children aged 3 to 4 years.
We used data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2019, and included 7,326 rural children aged 3 to 4 years. The ECD index (ECDI) included four domains: literacy-numeracy, learning, physical and socio-emotional development. If a child met at least three of these four domains, the child was indicated as developmentally "on track".
The findings show that 27.4% of rural children missed to reach developmentally on-track while 72.2% of children did not attain the literacy-numeracy domain of ECD. The home environment factors including parental participation in children's activities, was found to be associated with ECD. For instance, reading books to child had 26% (aOR = 1.26, 95% CI = 1.08-1.48), and telling stories to child had 29% (aOR = 1.29, 95% CI = 1.09-1.53) more developmentally on-track in overall ECDI. Similar associations between home environment factors and specific ECD domains were also obtained. We also identified that children aged 4 years, girls, and children of mothers with higher socio-economic status (SES) were higher developmentally on-track than their counterparts.
Home environment factors like reading books and telling stories to children were found to be significantly associated with ECD in rural areas of Bangladesh. Our study's findings would assist in implementing the essential public health intervention to enhance the ECD program especially in the rural Bangladeshi context.
了解与孟加拉国 3 至 4 岁儿童家庭环境相关的因素与幼儿期发展（ECD）之间的关系，有助于为ECD 结果较低的儿童找到合适的干预措施。因此，我们旨在了解农村孟加拉国 3 至 4 岁儿童家庭环境因素与 ECD 之间的关系。
我们使用了 2019 年多指标类集调查（MICS）的数据，其中包括 7326 名 3 至 4 岁的农村儿童。ECD 指数（ECDI）包括四个领域：读写能力、学习、身体和社会情感发展。如果一个孩子至少符合这四个领域中的三个，那么这个孩子就被认为是“发展正常”。
研究结果表明，27.4%的农村儿童未能达到发展正常，而 72.2%的儿童未能达到 ECD 的读写能力领域。家庭环境因素，包括父母参与孩子的活动，与 ECD 有关。例如，给孩子读书的孩子有 26%（aOR=1.26，95%CI=1.08-1.48），给孩子讲故事的孩子有 29%（aOR=1.29，95%CI=1.09-1.53）在总体 ECDI 中发展更正常。家庭环境因素与特定 ECD 领域之间也存在类似的关联。我们还发现，4 岁的儿童、女孩和母亲社会经济地位（SES）较高的儿童比他们的同龄人发展更正常。
研究发现，像给孩子读书和讲故事这样的家庭环境因素与孟加拉国农村地区的 ECD 显著相关。我们的研究结果将有助于实施基本公共卫生干预措施，特别是在孟加拉国农村地区，以加强 ECD 计划。
