IHSN Survey Catalog
  • Home
  • Microdata Catalog
  • Citations
  • Login
    Login
    Home / Central Data Catalog / GHA_2021-2022_IDSIE_V01_M
central

Impact Evaluation - Promoting Infant-Directed Speech in Ghana
Baseline and Endline Surveys

Ghana, 2021 - 2022
Get Microdata
Reference ID
GHA_2021-2022_IDSIE_v01_M
Producer(s)
Mark Walsh, Seema Jayachandran, Pascaline Dupas
Metadata
DDI/XML JSON
Study website
Created on
Feb 06, 2023
Last modified
Feb 06, 2023
Page views
17950
Downloads
156
  • Study Description
  • Data Dictionary
  • Downloads
  • Get Microdata
  • Identification
  • Version
  • Coverage
  • Producers and sponsors
  • Sampling
  • Survey instrument
  • Data collection
  • Depositor information
  • Data Access
  • Disclaimer and copyrights
  • Metadata production
  • Identification

    Survey ID number

    GHA_2021-2022_IDSIE_v01_M

    Title

    Impact Evaluation - Promoting Infant-Directed Speech in Ghana

    Subtitle

    Baseline and Endline Surveys

    Country
    Name Country code
    Ghana GHA
    Study type

    Sample Frame, Households [sf/hh]

    Abstract

    While parents universally use "baby talk" to soothe an infant or get her attention, engaging in a second form of infant-directed speech (IDS- talking to young children with complete, if simplified, sentences and a rich variety of word- varies by socioeconomic status (SES) within societies Hart and Risley (1995); Hoff (2003) and across societies Farran et al. (2016). Because IDS promotes cognitive development of children (Monnot, 1999; Weisleder and Fernald, 2013), gaps in IDS compound the disadvantages that children in poorer families face.

    The most likely explanation for parental under-investment in IDS is inaccurately low expectations about the pace of child development.A large body of literature in the United States has shown that the lower the parents' SES, the lower their expectations about when children will master certain cognitive skills, e.g., speaking in a partial sentence of 3 words or more (see Cunha et al. (2013) and references therein). In Ghana, our study setting, on average mothers reported parents should start talking to their baby at 11 months, and in full sentences only when the child is 2 years old.

    The low usage of IDS among poor parents across the world may significantly hinder early childhood development. Identifying a low-cost and scalable intervention that can successfully increase awareness of the benefits of IDS and increase its practice could be an extremely cost an effective way to raise early childhood development levels. This, in turn, would increase the returns to the government's investments in education, since early childhood development is a critical factor in schooling outcomes.

    A simple and scalable intervention was implemented and tested experimentally in Ghana. The intervention consists of showing a short video about IDS to women with a young infant or pregnant women. The three-minute video is a simple animation with a voice-over describing the value of IDS and encouraging the viewer to speak to her babies and tell family members to do so. The video was translated into seven of Ghana's main local languages and English. Viewers could choose the language in which they wanted to hear the video. They could also elect to watch it twice.

    Data from a follow-up survey conducted after 6 months is used to estimate the impacts of the intervention on maternal beliefs about IDS, parental practices, and early childhood development. The interventions increased mothers' beliefs in the benefits of IDS and their self-reports of IDS behaviors performed with their infants. The intervention also increased measures of the infants' language and cognitive development that were based on the mother's reports of the infants' behaviors.

    Unit of Analysis

    Individuals

    Version

    Version Description
    • v2.1: Edited, anonymous dataset for public distribution.

    Coverage

    Geographic Coverage

    Tamale, in Northern Ghana.

    Producers and sponsors

    Primary investigators
    Name Affiliation
    Mark Walsh Stanford University
    Seema Jayachandran Princeton University
    Pascaline Dupas Stanford University
    Funding Agency/Sponsor
    Name
    Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund

    Sampling

    Sampling Procedure

    The data is collected from a sample of antenatal and postnatal patients from 10 governmental clinics around the city of Tamale, in Northern Ghana. Respondents were approached during their clinic visits and, if interested, were screened for eligibility. In order to participate, women had to

    1. be aged 18-40 years old,
    2. have an infant, or be pregnant with a child who would have been 2-18 months old in September 2021, at the time of our follow-up survey, and
    3. speak English or Dagbani (the main language in Tamale and one of the 8 languages in which the intervention video is available). Within each clinic, 50% of respondents were randomly selected to watch the intervention video and receive an IDS-themed calendar.

    The remaining 50% are part of the control group. They did not watch the video. They received a regular calendar with no mention of IDS.

    Survey instrument

    Questionnaires

    Baseline and Endline Survey

    Data collection

    Dates of Data Collection
    Start End Cycle
    2022-09-07 2022-12-07 Endline
    2021-03-02 2021-03-25 Baseline
    Mode of data collection
    • Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

    Depositor information

    Depositor
    Name
    Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF) Team

    Data Access

    Confidentiality
    Confidentiality declaration text
    Data have been anonymized to remove personal identifying information.
    Citation requirements

    Use of the dataset must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:

    • the Identification of the Primary Investigator
    • the title of the survey (including country, acronym and year of implementation)
    • the survey reference number
    • the source and date of download

    Example:
    Mark Walsh (Stanford University), Seema Jayachandran (Princeton University), Pascaline Dupas (Stanford University). Impact Evaluation - Promoting Infant-Directed Speech in Ghana (IDS 2021-2022). Ref: GHA_2021-2022_IDSIE_v01_M. Downloaded from [uri] on [date].

    Disclaimer and copyrights

    Disclaimer

    The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.

    Metadata production

    DDI Document ID

    DDI_GHA_2021-2022_IDSIE_v01_M_WB

    Producers
    Name Affiliation Role
    Development Data Group World Bank Documentation of the study
    Date of Metadata Production

    2022-11-29

    Metadata version

    DDI Document version

    Version 01 (2022-11-29)

    Back to Catalog
    IHSN Survey Catalog

    © IHSN Survey Catalog, All Rights Reserved.