Understanding the Early Years - Early Childhood Development in North York - May 2001

5. What we learned about the children from the NLSCY

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Key findings

• Most children were in good health.
• Children in North York scored better on all indicators of behaviour than national and provincial averages.
• Scores on receptive language assessments were poorer than national and provincial averages.
• Children scored better on assessments that were less language dependent.

The NLSCY measures children's outcomes and provides information about the child, the family and the community, so variations in results can be explained and understood in the context of the child's environment.

Physical health

Over 84% of parents rated their children as being in excellent or very good health. Only about 7% of parents reported that their children had experienced an injury serious enough to warrant medical attention. Although about one in five reported that their child suffered from a long-term condition (e.g., allergy, bronchitis, mental handicap, epilepsy), less than 4% felt this condition limited their children's participation in school, at play, in sports or other activities.

Although their overall health was rated as very good by their parents, more of the children (8%) in North York were reported to have had a low birth weight (less than 2500 grams at birth) than in Ontario or the country as a whole. Low birth weights have been associated with long-term chronic illness and delays in development.

Measuring behaviour

Six measures of behaviour were used in this study: pro-social, hyperactivity/inattention, emotional disorder/anxiety, physical aggression, indirect aggression and property offences. Examples of questions asked are shown.

• Pro-social behaviour: does the child show sympathy to someone who has made a mistake; volunteer to help clear up a mess someone else has made; comfort a child who is crying or upset; invite others to join in a game?
• Hyperactivity: parents were asked to indicate their degree of agreement to eight statements pertaining to their child, including: your child can't sit still; is restless; fidgets; has trouble sticking to any activity; can't concentrate; and has difficulty waiting for his or her turn in games.
• Emotional disorder is characterized by feelings of anxiety or depression. The scale includes statements such as: your child seems unhappy, sad or depressed; cries a lot; and is nervous, high-strung or tense.
• Physical aggression included getting into fights, perpetrating physical attacks, making threats against people, cruelty and bullying.
• The indirect aggression score was formed by parents' responses to five statements, such as: when your child is mad at someone, he or she tries to get others to dislike that person; and says bad things behind the other's back.
• While relatively few children engaged in behaviours such as stealing or vandalizing, some parents reported their children lied, cheated or destroyed things belonging to others - behaviours that were indicative of problems measured by the property offences scale.

Behaviours

Kindergarten children in North York obtained better results than the provincial (Ontario) and national scores on all six behavioural measures — 81.7%⁶ scored highly on the measure of pro-social behaviour (compared to 78.4% in Canada and 79.7% in Ontario). About one fifth of children exhibited behaviours consistent with those seen in the measure of indirect aggression, and a smaller percentage had problems in other areas (hyperactivity/inattention, emotional disorder, physical aggression, property offences).

Learning and language

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Revised)

Two measures were used to assess kindergardeners' language and learning skills in English. First, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Revised (PPVT-R), and second, the Who Am I? instrument.

The PPVT-R assessed a child's receptive or hearing vocabulary. The children heard a word said aloud and were then asked to point to one of four pictures they believed corresponded to the word. Based on their scores, almost 38% of children in the community were classified as being at a level of "delayed verbal development." This is about twice the provincial and national rates for children of the same age and equivalent grade level. Almost 7% of children in North York showed skills associated with "advanced verbal development," compared to about 13% of Ontario and Canadian children.

The ethnic diversity of the North York community may explain some of the low results obtained by the kindergarten students. By its very nature, the PPVT-R requires that subjects have a good understanding of the language in which the test is administered (English or French). Since 47% of children in the North York sample first learned to speak a language other than English, lower scores for receptive vocabulary in English were not a complete surprise. When English was the first language spoken at home, the percentage of children showing "delayed verbal development". dropped to a rate of 20.3%, similar to that of the rest of Canada. In households where English was not the child's first language spoken, a full 63% of children showed "delayed verbal development" by PPVT-R standards. However, past research has shown that the deficit in literary skills among immigrant youth was reduced with each additional year of English use (Willms, Statistics Canada and HRDC (1999).⁷

Therefore, language support to children, parents, pre-schools and schools may be an important priority for the North York community.

Who am I?

Children were asked to write their names, and some numbers, letters and words when the Who Am I? instrument was used. They also copied some figures (circles, squares) and drew a picture of themselves. Who Am I? was used to assess broad stages of development and learning, visual motor integration and fine motor skills. Because the tasks are not dependent on language, it can be used to assess the development of children whose knowledge of English or French is limited.

About 42% of children scored in the average range on this test, but high numbers of children scored either above (29.5%) or below (27.9%) the average range.⁸ Fewer children did poorly in this test than in the PPVT-R (38%) — as expected because the test is not as dependent on language as is the PPVT-R, but the percentage doing poorly is still significant. This indicates that for most children, developmental skills were progressing well despite language delays.

Summing up

Though a smaller percentage of children had behaviour problems compared to their counterparts in the rest of the country, a higher percentage than the national average showed delayed or below average vocabulary development. It appears these effects are at least partially related to the fact that the assessments are conducted in English or French and a high proportion of the children did not speak either as their first language. However, the consequences of this finding remain significant as they will likely impact on a child's ability to excel in the school system. Provision of language development programs and/or services for younger children may be helpful.

• ⁶All thresholds for behaviour scales were based on the score obtained by the bottom 20% (or the lowest percentile observed in the distribution) of kindergarten students in the cycle 2 NLSCY national sample.
• ⁷Willms, J.D., Statistics Canada, HRDC. (1999). Inequalities in literacy skills among youth in Canada and the United States. Co-published by Human Resources Development Canada and National Literacy Secretariat. Statistics Canada catalogue no. 89-552-MPE, no.6.
• ⁸These categories were based on Australian norms, as this is the first time this assessment was administered in Canada; thus, no Canadian norms exist. Thresholds set for Australian children in the equivalent grade level were used to classify the North York results into these categories.

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