This brief introduction discusses the measurement focus of this course and frames the landscape of education and development research with children and adolescents. The module concludes by presenting the conceptual framework for practical measurement used in the rest of the course.

Feasibility deals with the actual process of practitioners measuring learning or development outcomes for children and adolescents in low-resource, crisis-affected, and fragile contexts and asks whether the process is doable given the logistical, operational, and systematic limitations that are in place. In this module, practitioners will learn about the tradeoffs between adopting an existing tool, contextualizing or adapting a measure, or developing a survey from scratch. We also discuss the steps we recommend that practitioners take if they decide to contextualize or adapt an existing tool.

Silvia Diazgranados and Jeongmin Lee

“In this document, we focus on the assessment of children’s holistic learning and development (CHILD): specifically, the knowledge, skills and attitudes that may both promote and/or prevent children from thriving, now and in the future. We provide a step-by-step decision-making guide for researchers and practitioners interested in using CHILD measures in emergency contexts. The decision-making tree, tools and resources presented in this document will help these users make informed decisions about how to choose, contextualize and implement reliable and valid measures and understand the needs, challenges and critical support faced by the communities they serve.”

Gordon B. Willis

“This document describes the cognitive interviewing techniques appropriate for questionnaire development and testing.”

Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child

The cognitive interviewing process has been primarily focused on youth and adults from high-resource countries. In order to ensure a more reliable and comprehensive study in low-resource or fragile settings, cognitive interviewing must be adapted to account for the age, expressive vocabulary, and capacities of children in the local community. This guide describes the experience of using cognitive interviewing in a low-resource setting when practitioners adapted the ISELA for Haitian school children. This guide includes discussion of the changes made and what was learned through the process, focusing on recommendations for researchers and practitioners who want to conduct similar measure adaptation with children in low-resource and fragile contexts.

“CREDI were designed to serve as a population-level measure of early childhood development (ECD) for children from birth to age three. As the name suggests, the CREDI exclusively relies on caregiver reports, and thus primarily focuses on milestones and behaviors that are easy for caregivers to understand, observe, and describe.”

An initiative in the United States of America “that provides funding for Sustainable Community Projects (SCP). These projects are developed to meet locally identified needs, are research based, and provide quality programs for vulnerable, at-risk, low-income, and low-resource children, youth, and families to promote positive life outcomes.” Library includes approximately 300 different measures of child and adolescent health and development outcomes.

“The Assessment Guide provides several resources for practitioners to select and use measures of student SEL, including guidance on how to select an assessment and use student SEL data, a catalog of SEL assessments equipped with filters and bookmarking, and real-world accounts of how practitioners are using SEL assessments.”

“IDELA, is an easy-to-use, rigorous global tool that measures children’s early learning and development and provides ECCD programs, donors, and government partners with clear evidence on the status of children from 3.5 to 6 years.”

“The Measurement Library is a collection of measurement tools to assess children’s learning and holistic development and service provider quality in crisis contexts. This includes measures that have been vetted and tested by members of the Evidence to Action: Education in Emergencies (3EA) MENAT Consortium, along with technical working papers on the validity and reliability of the measures, guidance materials and training materials.”

“NIH Toolbox includes over 100 stand-alone measures, also available in 30-minute batteries to assess Cognition, Emotion, Motor, and Sensation…NIH Toolbox is appropriate to use in the general population, in individuals with chronic conditions, and across the lifespan. While many measures can assess function from early childhood, others target specific age bands. All scores for a given domain are on a common scale and can be used for longitudinal measurement.”

“The People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network is a south-south partnership of organisations working across three continents. Member organisations conduct citizen-led assessments and/or citizen-led actions aimed at improving learning outcomes.” Includes primarily literacy/reading and numeracy assessments.

“A web-based tool that provides information about assessments of K-12 students’ interpersonal, intrapersonal, and higher-order cognitive competencies. Practitioners, researchers, and policymakers can use it to explore what assessments are available, what they are designed to measure, how they are administered, what demands they place on students and teachers, and what kinds of uses their scores support.”

Feasibility deals with the actual process of practitioners measuring learning or development outcomes for children and adolescents in low-resource, crisis-affected, and fragile contexts and asks whether the process is doable given the logistical, operational, and systematic limitations that are in place. The feasibility of a measurement and evaluation plan must also address how simply and easily a practitioner can implement a plan and what level of guidance is needed for them to do so effectively. In this module on feasibility, practitioners will learn how to feasibly plan for and collect data from children and adolescents.

The World Bank

A detailed, step-by-step guide for how to train groups of assessors or enumerators to collect data. 

J-PAL

“The ability of an evaluation to detect a meaningful impact of a program is determined by the evaluation’s sample size and statistical power. This is a tool for policymakers and practitioners that describes some of the factors that affect statistical power and sample size.”

Qualtrics

Online sample size calculator that can help you determine your ideal survey sample size. 

Rebecca A. Maynar and Nianbo Dong

“This workbook is primarily designed to aide in the a priori power analysis calculation of minimum detectable effect size (MDES) and sample size required for a given research design and analysis. There are multiple worksheets included in this workbook, each specific to a certain design and analysis.”