Home environment: Short-term trends and predictors in early childhood from an Indian community birth cohort.
Beena Koshy, Arun Karthikeyan, Anuradha Bose and 5 others
PMID 33377201WHAT IT FOUND
Overall home scores did not change much over 3 years, but family assets, mother's education and mood were strongly linked to home quality.
Key findings
01Average home environment scores stayed similar over time, but all home environment subdomains changed between 6 and 36 months.
02A simplified family SES score was the single biggest predictor of home environment score at 6, 24 and 36 months and of change in home environment over time.
03Maternal depression was negatively associated with home environment scores at 6 and 24 months and with parental emotional and verbal interaction, punishment avoidance, play materials, daily stimulation and child cleanliness over time.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was done in one semi-urban slum in South India, so it may not apply to other families or countries. It followed children from birth to 3 years, but 251 were enrolled and 218 remained at 36 months, and dropouts were mainly migration. It measured the home environment, not child speech, language, motor or cognitive outcomes, so it cannot show what a child can do. The HOME scale had internal consistency of 0.610, 0.690 and 0.678 at 6, 24 and 36 months, which is modest. The study can show associations, not cause and effect; SES, maternal education, depression and parity may reflect other family stressors.
Declared interests
The MAL-ED project was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation for the NIH and the National Institutes of Health/Fogarty International Center. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that increasing family assets or treating maternal depression will improve the home environment. This was an observational cohort, so it shows associations, not cause and effect, and average HOME scores did not change much over 3 years even though some subdomains changed.