Early Years Preschool Program Impact Evaluation 2019, Endline Survey
Bangladesh, 2019
Get MicrodataIdentification
BGD_2019_EYPP-EL_v01_M
Early Years Preschool Program Impact Evaluation 2019
Endline Survey
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Bangladesh | BGD |
The endline data collection for the impact evaluation of the Save the Children's Early Year Pre-School Program (EYPP) was implemented by Data International Ltd. (DI) under the supervision of the American Institutes for Research (AIR), USA and funding from the World Bank. With its EYPP study, Save the Children provided an additional year of preschool to 4-year-old children, who then progress to the 1-year government pre-primary class at age 5 and Grade 1 at age 6. This study reports various steps taken for data collection including training, challenges faced during data collection and lessons learned under this phase of the study.
The focus of the endline survey was to interview all households and children who participated under the baseline (November 2017) and midline (December 2018) survey. Under the baseline a total of 1,856 households and children from the catchment areas of 100 preschool centers, consisting of 50 treatments and 50 controls were interviewed. Detailed household information of the selected children is also being collected using a structured questionnaire. To capture children's current development, International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) tool was administered on the sampled students.
This study aimed to (a) investigate the impacts of offering an additional year of pre-primary education in Bangladesh on child development outcomes (cognitive and social-emotional) and (b) examine the benefits relative to the costs of the program. The study also examined the mechanisms through which the Early Year Pre-School Program affected the outcomes of interest (e.g., children's school readiness) and the operational and community conditions for program implementation. This study provides evidence for the government of Bangladesh on how and how much the additional year of preschool benefits children, and at what cost. In addition to informing future policy in Bangladesh, this information may be useful for other countries considering similar programming. This survey provides endline findings for the evaluation and incorporates information from the baseline (2017) and midline (2018) surveys.
Sample survey data [ssd]
Individuals, schools, and communities
Version
v01
Scope
Community: community infrastructure, community assets, and programming for children aged 3-6
School: classroom and school conditions, and material resources
Family/Household: household roster, family member characteristics, home environment, parenting practices, socio-economic background characteristics (food security, expenditures, child health)
Children: school readiness (social and emotional development, emergent numeracy, emergent literacy, executive function, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and appro aches to learning)
Coverage
District of Meherpur
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Elizabeth Spier | American Institutes for Research |
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Kevin Kamto | American Institutes for Research | Questionnaire design, sampling, data collection, data analysis |
| Adria Molotsky | American Institutes for Research | Questionnaire design, sampling, data analysis |
| Azizur Rahman | Data International | Data collection, data processing |
| Najmul Hossain | Data International | Data collection, data processing |
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| World Bank Group | Funding impact evaluation |
Sampling
We conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the EYPP to determine its impacts on children's learning and development. In 2016, we randomly assigned 100 schools in the Meherpur district of Bangladesh to either a treatment group receiving the EYPP (n = 50) or a no-program control group (n = 50). In October 2017, we conducted a census of the area around all 100 schools to identify children who lived within a 15-minute walk of the school and were in the target age range-that is, children expected to enroll in a typical government pre-primary in 2019 and enter Grade 1 in 2020. In the 50 treatment school catchment areas, children selected for the study were invited to participate in the EYPP at their local school during the 2018 school year and then would go on to government pre-primary as usual in 2019. In the 50 control school catchment areas, children selected for the study would be eligible to enroll in the government pre-primary as usual in 2019 but did not have the EYPP available to them the year before.
Sampling of Children:
The target sample for our study included all children in the census areas born from January 1, 2013 - December 31, 2013 (because on-time enrollment in government pre-primary school for these children would be in January 2019). In most cases (exact figure unknown but in a substantial majority), children's dates of birth were verified with the Extended Program of Immunization (EPI) card or a birth certificate. If these documents were unavailable (even after parents were encouraged to search), enumerators recorded what the parent reported as the child's date of birth. We identified a total of 1,986 children born in 2013. We did not exclude any age-eligible children based on any other criteria (for example, children with disabilities were included in our sample pool).
AIR agreed with the World Bank that we would sample an average of 20 children in each of the 100 study communities. Many communities had fewer than 20 eligible children. Because EYPP centers will typically enroll up to 25 children, for both treatment and control communities with 25 or fewer children, we included all eligible children in the study (with parental consent). In the 20 communities (14 treatment and 6 control) with over 25 children in the target age range, we drew a random subsample of 25 for inclusion in this sample.
For this longitudinal study, we collected baseline, midline, and endline data. The midline and endline samples included schools, children, and families enrolled in the study at baseline; we did not add any new participants after baseline. Of the 1,856 enrolled children and families, 1,801 (97%) participated at all three timepoints.
97% (n = 1801 children)
Survey instrument
We administered the family questionnaire at baseline, midline, and endline. Its purpose was to gather information on the characteristics of the study children and their home environments and, at midline and endline, to determine whether and how the intervention affected the home learning environment. Nearly all items on this questionnaire were already used widely in Bangladesh as part of national household surveys. To administer this tool, enumerators read questions and response options aloud to respondents (parents or guardians of the study children). For some questions about family background, we asked the question only at baseline because the answers were unlikely to change across time and were unrelated to the intervention.
At each timepoint, we measured children's school readiness with the IDELA, which has been used widely in Bangladesh. A trained enumerator administered the assessment to children one on one. At endline, we also added subtasks from the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA) as used in Bangladesh. Because the EGRA and EGMA were designed for children in Grade 1 and higher, we did not expect the study children to perform well, but wanted to ensure that we were prepared should we have ceiling issues with children's performance on the IDELA.
The endline parent questionnaire can be found under the 'Documentation' tab. To obtain a free copy of the IDELA questionnaire please go to https://idela-network.org/the-idela-tool/ and register.
Data collection
| Start | End | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| 2019-12-01 | 2019-12-26 | Endline |
| Name |
|---|
| Data International |
A total of 40 field enumerators-20 for IDELA testing and 20 for household interviews-completed the data collection. The field enumerators worked under the direct supervision of 10 field supervisors.
Training occurred in two batches. The first round of training was at Data International's Dhaka office, November 3-5, 2019. Field supervisors and a selected number of field enumerators attended these sessions.
Data International's senior staff-the team leader, the data management specialist (DMS), and the field operations specialist-were the other trainers. The DMS focused on the usage of tablets during the interviews. The training highlighted common mistakes made by the enumerators in previous rounds of data collection while using tablets. The DMS also ensured that the field data collectors were comfortable in data entry, and that no glitches appeared in the software developed by the DMS and the data management assistant.
The second batch of training occurred in the town of Meherpur, November 7-9, 2019. The remaining field enumerators received the training from Data International's senior staff. A staff member from Save the Children provided training on the school readiness assessment.
Data processing
Data editing took place at a number of stages throughout the processing, including:
- Office editing and coding
- During data entry
- Structure checking and completeness
- Secondary editing
- Structural checking of STATA data files
Data Access
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
Elizabeth Spier (American Institutes of Research). 2019. Bangladesh Early Years Preschool Program Impact Evaluation (EYPP-EL) 2019, Endline Survey. Ref. BGD_2019_EYPP-EL_v01_M. Downloaded from [url] on [date].
Disclaimer and copyrights
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.
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Kevin Kamato | American Institutes for Research | kkamato@air.org |
| Adria Molotsky | American Institutes for Research | amolotsky@air.org |
Metadata production
DDI_BGD_2019_EYPP-EL_v01_M_WB
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Development Economics Data Group | The World Bank | Documentation of the DDI |
2020-04-29