Understanding the Early Years - Early Childhood Development in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - November 2002

I. Introduction

A. What this study is about

Understanding the Early Years (UEY) is an initiative that provides information to help strengthen the research capacity of communities to make informed decisions about the best policies and most appropriate programs to serve families with young children. It seeks to provide information about the influence of community factors on young children's development, and to enhance community capacity to use these data to monitor early childhood development and to create effective community-based supports.

There is increasing evidence to support the importance of investing in the early years of children's development. New research shows that these formative years are critical, and that the kind of nurturing and stimulation that children receive in their early years can have a major impact on the rest of their lives.

Evidence also suggests that neighbourhoods and communities where children grow and learn directly influence their development. They affect parents' ability to provide the best possible family environment, and the ability of schools to offer the best possible education.

Neighbourhoods, communities, provinces and regions across Canada differ in important ways. Therefore, gathering community-specific information about children and the places where they are raised can help the policy sector² deliver programs that are sensitive and responsive to local conditions. Understanding the Early Years can contribute to this process.

This report is one of twelve community research reports. Studies in one pilot community and five study communities were conducted in 2000-2001, and another seven study communities were conducted in 2001-2002. This report presents results for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan one of the seven community studies conducted in 2001-2002. Each report describes children's outcomes and explains them in terms of three factors: family background, family processes, and community factors. Children's outcomes were assessed in three major categories: physical health and well-being, cognitive skills, and behavioural measures.

Data describing the outcomes of children ages 5 and 6, as well as the family and community environments in which they live, were collected from three sources: their parents, their teachers, and from the children themselves. The data for all twelve community research reports were based on the Early Development Instrument (EDI) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) assessments. Samples were drawn in each of the communities from families with children ages 5 and 6, and the teachers, parents, and children were given both of the EDI and NLSCY assessments.

In order to understand the performance of the children in this community based on the EDI, the results are compared to a larger EDI sample of about 28,250 children, drawn from selected communities. Although this sample, referred to as EDI-16, is not truly national or representative, it provides a means of comparing children in this community with other 5-6 year old children. The number of children in the EDI-16 sample is different from that used in the EDI monitoring report.³

The results from the NLSCY assessments taken by the community's children are compared with the national means, developed from the national survey, which has a nationally representative sample.

The first aim of this report is to assess how children fare in cognitive and behavioural outcomes and in physical health and well-being. It considers children's developmental outcomes shortly after they begin kindergarten. Where possible, the report provides provincial- and national-level information with which local conditions can be compared.

The report's second aim is to discern how important certain family and community factors are in affecting children's development, as well as to provide some indication of what actions might further improve children's outcomes in this community.

The report sets out ten indicators upon which this community can act over the next few years. If the policy sector can devise means to improve the processes associated with these indicators, it is likely that children's outcomes during the formative years will improve, as will their chances of leading healthy and fulfilling lives.

B. How the study was conducted

The information contained in this document was collected and analyzed using a variety of methods.

Two major types of information about the children were collected. The first considers aspects of children's development at ages 5 and 6, which comprises five major domains:

• Physical health and well-being
• Social competence
• Emotional health and maturity
• Language and cognitive development
• Communication skills and general knowledge.

Information for this set of domains was collected by teachers, using a checklist called the Early Development Instrument (EDI), developed by Dr. Dan Offord and Dr. Magdalena Janus at the Canadian Centre for Studies of Children at Risk, McMaster University. Teachers of all kindergarten children attending public schools in Saskatoon were asked to complete the checklist about the behaviours and development of each child in their class. This information was used to determine how ready the community's children, as a whole, were for school.

The second type of developmental information was collected through a survey of parents, guardians, and the children themselves. The instruments used in the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth Community Study were administered to children and their parents. This was done to acquire more detailed information about the experiences of children and families in Saskatoon, as well as, measures of children's outcomes regarding their cognitive skills, pro-social behaviour and other behavioural outcomes. In addition, information regarding childcare arrangements (e.g., whether children were cared for by parents, relatives, or non-relatives, either at home or outside the home) was collected.

A random sample of 425 kindergarten children from Saskatoon was selected to participate in this survey. Statistics Canada interviewers collected detailed information from and about these children using instruments from the NLSCY Community Study. The major instruments measuring children's outcomes include:

• Vocabulary Skills (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Revised)
• Developmental Level (Who Am I?)
• Number Knowledge (Number Knowledge Assessment)
• Behaviour Outcomes.

The interviewers also collected information about several family and community factors that can help explain the patterns of child development in the community.

Children completed assessments that asked them to draw, print symbols (e.g., letters and words), show their understanding of quantity and number sequence, and match pictures to words that they heard. Their families provided information about their social and economic backgrounds; their children's activities and involvement in the community; their health; and their social, emotional, and behavioural development.

Because the NLSCY questionnaire is also used across the country as a national survey, the outcomes for children in this community can be compared with national data.

C. Why the study is of interest

Understanding the Early Years combines information about children with information about their families and the communities in which they live. This in turn, provides an understanding of the relationship between children's outcomes and the environments in which they are raised. This is important for Canada's parents and communities who want to help their children develop well. Second, it helps the individuals, institutions, and communities who work with children to understand these processes at the levels where action is often most effective, the neighbourhood and community.

This report highlights some of the key findings from the information that was collected from teachers, parents, and their children. It examines the overall development of children in kindergarten (through the Early Development Instrument) and provides a more detailed look at the outcomes of these children (through the NLSCY Community Study). It suggests some of the unique strengths from which Saskatoon can work, and some challenges to overcome in continuing to build a collective commitment to ensure the health, well-being, and positive development of its young children.

D. Socio-economic status in study area

Socio-economic status (SES) is an important variable in social research because it affects a person's chances for education, income, occupation, marriage, health, friends, and even life expectancy.⁴ This report describes children's outcomes and how they are affected by family socio-economic status, family processes, and community resources. Thus, it is helpful to have an understanding of the socio-economic backgrounds of the families in this community, as well as of how these are distributed geographically across the study area.

Socio-economic status is usually quantified as a composite measure comprising income, level of education, and occupational status. Accordingly, the measure of SES used here combines the income, level of education, and occupational status of the children's parents. Other family factors, such as family structure (e.g., single- or two-parent family), or whether the mother was a teenager when the child was born, are not dimensions of SES (although they are usually correlated with SES). Additional aspects of family and community structure will be presented in Section III.

Figure 1.1 shows the distribution of socioeconomic status in this community. This map clearly shows considerable residential segregation, with concentrations of and low SES families on the south-west side of the city, and high SES families on the eastern side of the city, and along the South Saskatchewan River. The areas of low SES families are in general contiguous, as are the areas of high SES. There are a few enclaves of low SES families in the east side of the city, which are surrounded by high SES areas. The reverse is not true.

Despite the relatively low socio-economic status of some sections of Saskatoon, the children of this community scored near the national averages for many outcomes measured with the EDI and the NLSCY instruments. Moreover, the analyses in the next section show that the spatial distribution of outcomes does not match SES patterns (see Figures 2.3 to 2.7). This indicates that there are many children in poor areas who are faring quite well, and children in high SES areas with rather low outcomes.

² Policy sector is broadly conceived to include families, the private and voluntary sectors, and governments at local, provincial and federal levels.

³ The EDI community monitoring report uses only EDI data. The NLSCY data are from a sample of all of the children who completed the EDI. Therefore, the numbers in the EDI report and the research report are not the same.

⁴ Miller, Delbert C. 1991. Handbook of Research Design and Social Measurement. Sage Publications, Inc. Newbury Park, CA. p. 327.