Preschool teachers' perceptions about relationships with students (teacher–child relationships TCRs) predict children's subsequent social competence (SC) and academic progress. Why this is so remains ...unclear. Do TCRs shape children's development, or do child attributes influence both TCRs and subsequent development? Relations between TCRs and other measures were examined for 185 preschoolers (107 girls, 89 longitudinal, and ~75% European American). Teachers rated TCRs and child social/affective behaviors. Teacher–child interactions (TCIs) and children's affect expressiveness were observed. Child SC and receptive vocabulary were assessed. TCRs were significantly correlated with each type of outcome. TCIs, SC, expressed affect, and teacher‐rated behaviors also predicted TCRs longitudinally. Results suggest that TCR ratings predict subsequent adaptation because they summarize children's behavioral profiles rather than on TCR quality per se.
Little is known about associations between different forms of discipline and children’s literacy, social skills, and behavior in low- and middle-income countries. This study examined maternal use of ...physical discipline, harsh physical discipline, psychological aggression, and nonphysical discipline and their relative associations with preschool-aged children’s social and literacy skills and behavioral difficulty in 25 diverse African countries. We also explored whether belief in physical discipline and sociodemographic factors moderate the associations between different forms of discipline and childhood outcomes.
The participants were 32,817 biological mothers and their preschool-aged children from the UNICEF Multiple indicator Cluster Surveys. Information regarding belief in and use of physical and nonphysical forms of discipline and children’s social and literacy skills and behavioral difficulty were obtained via questionnaires obtained from mothers in each household.
Psychological aggression was negatively, and nonphysical discipline positively associated with children’s literacy skills. Harsh physical discipline, physical discipline, and psychological aggression were positively, and nonphysical discipline negatively associated with behavioral difficulty in children. Psychological aggression, physical discipline, and nonphysical discipline were positively associated with and harsh physical discipline negatively associated with children’s social skills. Maternal education, preschool enrollment, and household wealth variously moderated the associations between different modes of discipline and children’s literacy and social skills and behavioral difficulty.
Findings underline the negative consequences of harsh discipline on children’s social and literacy skills and behavioral difficulty in African cultural communities.
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of preventable vision impairment and blindness among adults with diabetes. The All of Us Research Program aims to collect biomedical data (electronic ...health records (EHR), surveys, biospecimens, physiological measures, and digital health technology such as wearable devices) from one million or more participants, with the goal of improving targeted management of diseases like diabetes and DR. Because issues such as data entry and record harmonization may affect the usability of these types of data, this study examines the quality and validity of All of Us data to inform fitness for research use. This study's primary objective was to examine the quality of the EHR data as it relates to the diagnosis, treatment, and procedures related to DR. Adults were selected for inclusion if their EHR data contained one of five ICD10CM codes that are associated with DR from type 2 diabetes. Demographics, measurements, eye care procedures, and medications are analyzed using a framework of five data quality dimensions (DQDs): completeness, concordance, conformance, plausibility, and temporality. After the Spring 2023 update, the database contains over 413,000 consented participants sharing EHRs, with nearly 49,000 participants with a type 2 diagnosis (excluding type 1) and 3,600 participants with a related DR diagnosis (prevalence of 0.87%). The DR cohort was 50% female, compared to all participants at 60%. In participant EHRs, over 99% contained physical measurements (height, weight, blood pressure), 79% contained codes for blood glucose lowering drugs (excluding insulin), and 47% contained a relevant eye care procedure. 73% of participant EHRs contained a plausible diagnosis series (type 2 diabetes before DR), with a median elapsed time of 2.1 years. This exploration of EHR data using DQDs affirms the validity and trustworthiness of All of Us program data, which forms a valuable dataset for future DR research.
Disclosure
J. Giannini: None. Y. Ostchega: None. M. Volynski: None. L. Sulieman: None. E. Dede Yildirim: None. E. Ochsenfaber: None. L. Berman: None.
Funding
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health's All of Us Research Program is collecting data from one million or more participants throughout the U.S. to advance precision medicine. The program enrolls ...individuals from diverse backgrounds with a focus on groups that are traditionally under-represented in biomedical research. The spring 2023 curated dataset release makes All of Us the world's largest and most diverse dataset of its kind available for broad research use, with nearly 45% of the data from people who identify with a racial or ethnic minority group.
The expanded phenotypic data includes survey data from 413,396 participants and electronic health record data from 287,012 participants that can be used to study diabetes and other metabolic disorders. The platform supports Jupyter notebooks to build queries using R or Python3, as well as custom interface tools that allow identification of data and health conditions within the large relational database using the OMOP common data model. Currently, the dataset includes 33,849 participants with at least one T2D condition code, one T2D drug exposure, or one T2D lab result, excluding T1D condition codes.
We will discuss the utility of this expansive dataset for T2D researchers and participants, and its potential to answer critical questions about metabolic health outcomes.
Disclosure
E. Dede yildirim: None. L. Sulieman: None. J. Giannini: None. Y. Ostchega: None. E. Ochsenfaber: None. L. Berman: None. A. Ramirez: n/a.
Data quality significantly impacts the reproducibility and validity of clinical research. The All of Us Research Program aims to collect biomedical data from one million or more participants, with ...the goal of enabling discoveries and improving targeted management of diseases like type 2 diabetes (T2D). All of Us data include whole genome sequences (WGS), electronic health records (EHRs), device measurements of physical activity, physical measures, and surveys available for analysis on the Researcher Workbench. The program's Spring 2023 curated data release makes All of Us the world's largest, most diverse genomic dataset of its kind available for broad research use, including 413,457 participants among which 60.4% are female, 44.6% are non-white.
To ensure maximum utility of this dataset for T2D researchers, we set out to quantify the data quality among participants who have T2D diagnosis codes in their EHRs. We identified the measurements and laboratory tests (hemoglobin A1C, height, weight, body mass index), medications (Insulin and non-insulin), and procedures commonly used in T2D research. We quantified data fitness using five dimensions of quality: completeness, concordance (i.e., agreement), conformance to data standards, plausibility, and temporality.
Among 287,012 participants who shared EHRs, 40,093 (14%) had T2D diagnosis codes where the mean age at first diagnosis was 56. Regarding measurements, 68% had A1C, 89% had height, and 70% had weight recorded in their EHR. For plausibility, 99.7% of weights, 99.9% of heights, and 99.3% of BMI were valid, and 97% of heights and weights have high concordance values. For medications, 99.7% of T2D participants had T2D medications, and 47.6% were prescribed after T2D diagnosis. Of these T2D participants, 69% have WGS or array data available.
Our analysis shows that the All of Us dataset offers a valuable and high-quality dataset for T2D phenotyping and diagnosis research. Our quality report and code will be available for replication and reuse by researchers with the upcoming release.
Disclosure
L. Sulieman: None. J. Giannini: None. E. Dede yildirim: None. Y. Ostchega: None. E. Ochsenfaber: None. L. Berman: None. A. Ramirez: n/a.
There is increasing interest in promoting positive parenting to improve childhood development in low- and middle-income countries. Following propositions in parenting and cultural-ecological ...frameworks about the importance of early parent-child engagement in fostering children’s literacy skills, we used the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Surveys to assess the associations between maternal and paternal book reading, storytelling, and naming/counting and early literacy skills in 90,397 families and their preschool-aged children in 25 low- and middle-income African countries. Individual participant data meta-analysis indicated strong associations between maternal and paternal engagement in reading, storytelling, and naming/counting and children’s letter recognition, reading simple words, and recognizing symbols. Preschool enrollment and maternal education consistently moderated the associations between maternal and paternal engagement activities and children’s literacy skills. These findings are in agreement with those found in the high-income countries and have implications for the transferability of parenting practices from high-income to low- and middle-income countries in efforts to improve the early academic skills of young children.
Research Findings: Positive parenting is widely recommended as a viable mechanism for boosting children's early cognitive skills across the world. Drawing on data from the UNICEF Multiple Indicator ...Surveys, associations were determined between maternal, paternal, and other household members' engagement in play, book reading, and storytelling and children's early literacy skills in Kenya. The sample consisted of 990 mother-father pairs, household members, and preschool-aged children from three rural counties in Kenya. Maternal book reading was associated with children's ability to read words. Paternal book reading was associated with children's ability to identify letters and read words and paternal engagement in play was associated with children's ability to identify letters. Other household members' engagement in book reading was associated with children's ability to read words and recognize symbols. Number of books in the home, enrollment in preschool education, household wealth, maternal education, and fathers' residential status were variously associated with children's literacy skills. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest the relative contribution of book reading versus play and storytelling by mothers, fathers and allocaregivers in advancing children's early literacy skills development in the Kenyan cultural context.
Using the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, this study assessed the associations between fathers’ cognitive engagement and preschoolers’ literacy skills in African Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean, ...and mixed-ethnic Caribbean families in Trinidad and Tobago. The sample consisted of 476 fathers and their preschool-aged children. Multigroup structural equation modeling indicated that paternal cognitive engagement was associated with children’s literacy skills in mixed-ethnic Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean families above and beyond maternal cognitive engagement activities. Across all groups, children’s age, number of hours in preschool, and number of children’s books in the home were associated with children’s literacy skills. Fathers’ residential status was associated with children’s literacy skills differently across ethnic groups. Findings are interpreted in terms of the importance and consistency of paternal engagement in the home environment for the acquisition of early language skills in developing countries.
Fathers' and mothers' cognitive and social engagement and their associations with preschoolers' literacy and social skills were assessed in Barbados, Belize, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, and ...Suriname using the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 4 and 5. The sample consisted of 11,473 preschool-aged children and their parents. Mothers were far more likely to engage in cognitive and social activities with children than were fathers across all countries. Associations between maternal and paternal cognitive engagement and children's literacy skills were not consistent across countries. Preschool enrollment, number of books in the home, and household wealth were variously associated with maternal and paternal engagement and children's literacy skills across most countries. Associations between maternal and paternal social engagement and children's social skills were less clear. Data are interpreted in terms of the importance of early parental engagement relative to preschool enrollment and literacy resources in the home environment for childhood development in Caribbean countries.
•Mothers were far more likely to engage in cognitive and social activities with preschool-aged children than were fathers.•Country level differences were also evident in both mothers' and fathers' engagement in literacy-type and social activities with children.•The pathways of associations between paternal and maternal engagement and child literacy skills were not uniform across countries.
Using propositions in cultural-ecological and maternal and paternal engagement models, this study utilized the 2018 UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys to examine which sociodemographic factors ...were associated with fathers’ and mothers’ cognitive engagement and the associations between parental and maternal cognitive engagement and preschoolers’ literacy skills in Amerindian, Maroon, Creole, Javanese, Hindustani, and Mixed-ethnic families in Suriname (N = 1,008). After establishing measurement invariance in constructs across ethnic groups, analyses revealed few consistent sociodemographic predictors of paternal and maternal cognitive engagement. Patterns of associations between paternal and maternal cognitive engagement and children’s literacy skills were not uniform across ethnic groups. Data have implications for understanding mothers’ and fathers’ contributions to children’s early literacy skills development and for developing parenting intervention programs in Suriname.
