Economic vulnerabilities, mental health, and coping strategies among Tanzanian youth during COVID-19

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated struggles for youth living in poor households. Youth in rural Tanzania are particularly vulnerable given widespread poverty, lack of formal sector employment opportunities, and health risks. We examine influences of the pandemic on economic insecurity and mental health and explore the coping strategies employed by youth and their households.

METHODS

We conducted mixed-method data collection with youth (N = 760 quantitative and N = 44 qualitative interviews) and households (n = 542) via mobile phone among a sub-set of a cohort from an on-going longitudinal sample in two rural regions in Tanzania. In addition to phone interviews, we collected data bi-weekly via SMS messaging. We present mixed-methods, descriptive analysis of the outcomes and longitudinally compare quantitative outcomes pre- and post-COVID-19, within the same individuals.

RESULTS

Adverse economic impacts were most salient, and to cope, youth engaged in more labor and domestic chores. Compared to prior the COVID-19 pandemic, youth reported spending more time caring for elderly or sick household members and gathering firewood or nuts.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings underscore the potential opportunity to promote policies and programs which address risks youth face. Recommended measures include expansion and adaptation of social protection policies, strengthened food and nutrition surveillance and referral systems, and scaling up community-based mental health programming.

Childhood adversity and educational attainment: Evidence from Zambia on the role of personality

Introduction

We examine whether personality traits mediate the association between childhood adversity and educational attainment using longitudinal data from a cohort in Zambia.

Methods

We fit a structural equation model using data on three forms of childhood adversity-household poverty, stunting as a measure of chronic malnutrition, and death of a parent-and data on the "Big Five" personality traits and educational attainment assessed at 15 years of age.

Results

We find that childhood poverty and death of a parent are associated with lower openness to experience. Furthermore, openness to experience mediates 93% of the negative association between death of a parent and school enrollment and 19% of the negative association between childhood poverty and enrollment.

Discussion

Our findings reinforce a diverse and growing body of evidence linking childhood adversity to educational attainment while also placing it in a new light. Future work should continue to examine the biological and psychosocial pathways that determine openness to experience and other personality traits, as well as their role in shaping important life outcomes.

I can teach what's in the book": Understanding the why and how behind teachers' implementation of a social-emotional learning (SEL) focused curriculum in rural

Contextualizing the role of teachers in social-emotional learning (SEL) in Malawi, we examine how teachers' comfort with, commitment to, and perceived school culture toward SEL relate to their actual teaching of it. Using surveys from 432 primary school teachers (20-60 years old), we found teacher comfort and supportive school culture were positively related to integration of SEL into classroom instruction, while commitment had no statistically significant relationship with implementation. We explore plausible explanations for these findings by interviewing 42 teachers. Together, our findings highlight the importance of teacher support systems and cultural compatibility of the curriculum for successful SEL implementation.

Adolescent Mothers' Experiences With Community Health Assistants in Rural Zambia

Adolescent health demands specific attention because adolescents have the lowest levels of health-care coverage of any age-group globally. The main objective as addressed in this article was to explore the lived experience of adolescent mothers and the services provided to them by community health assistants (CHAs) in rural Zambia. Because the number of adolescent mothers in rural Zambia is so high, it is even more critical to describe the lived experiences of health care among these young women with particular emphasis on primary health care as delivered by CHAs in rural Zambia. We used a mixed-methods design to address our research questions. Data were collected from nine focus groups, which were conducted with young mothers from four provinces and 10 districts (n = 60). To support our effort to better understand the delivery of maternal and child health care in rural Zambia, key informant interviews were conducted with adolescent mothers (n = 12). We also conducted surveys (n = 44) and one-on-one interviews (n = 22) with CHAs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study focused on the intersection of adolescents, maternal child health, and CHA delivery of care in Zambia. The results of our study suggest opportunities for change to operational practices within the rural health-care setting and the need to develop structured and age-appropriate services that focus on adolescents. This work addresses the gap in research for adolescents in health care in rural Zambia and brings attention to the unique health-care needs of adolescent mothers within the rural health-care setting.

Parenting and discipline in post-conflict Sierra Leone

BACKGROUND

While the literature on physical punishment concludes that it has negative effects on children, the practice remains common in many countries. In post-conflict countries with nongovernmental organizations (NGO) operating in child protection, traditional disciplinary practices may conflict with international child rights agendas. The country of Sierra Leone has a unique history of conflict, abject poverty, low literacy, and weak governance - often, NGO agents are responsible for providing social services that the government is unable to consistently provide.

OBJECTIVE

We examined how Sierra Leonean caregivers think about appropriate discipline for children, and whether they perceived any changes in their attitudes toward disciplinary practices since the end of the war.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

We collected data from parents and caregivers in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas of Sierra Leone's four districts.

METHODS

We used focus groups (12 groups, n = 92) and individual interviews (n = 21) to collect data in 2013. Focus groups and interviews were conducted by research assistants fluent in Krio and English. We used a thematic content analysis approach.

RESULTS

We found that physical discipline-"beating"-was widely acceptable and common. A few parents mentioned other means of discipline, such as withholding food. Parents widely agreed that parenting had changed since the war, and reported that child rights movements supported by NGOs had made it more difficult to discipline their children in traditional ways.

CONCLUSIONS

Discipline was seen a central component of child-rearing and a means of ensuring safe and proper development. This may be a protective mechanism in the precarious, high poverty environment of post-war Sierra Leone. The negative responses of parents to NGO efforts to reduce physical punishment and other forms of child abuse suggest that grassroots approaches are needed to address this pervasive problem.

Relationships Among Home Literacy Behaviors, Materials, Socioeconomic Status, and Early Literacy Outcomes Across 14 Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Most research on reading acquisition is conducted in high-income countries, and the majority of the limited research from middle- and low-income countries focuses exclusively on school settings. We therefore know little about how home literacy environments (HLEs) relate to early reading skill acquisition in low-resource settings. This study uses baseline data from 18 Save the Children (SC) project sites across 14 countries in Central America, Asia, and Africa to address several questions. First, we examine the structure of HLE in the data set, with a particular focus on its relationship to socioeconomic status (SES). Second, we extend our measurement model to examine the relationship between HLE and early literacy skills across the sample of more than 14,000 first- and second-grade boys and girls (mean age: 8.4 years) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We conclude that SES, home reading behaviors, and home reading materials are separate, though related constructs, and that materials in the home are a moderately strong predictor of early reading in these contexts. Our findings indicate that studies investigating literacy environments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) should clearly and distinctly conceptualize SES, literacy behaviors, and literacy materials. In addition, the robustness of the relationships between the presence of reading materials in the home and children’s early literacy skills suggests that increasing access to these materials may enhance skill development in low-resource contexts.

A multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis of teacher perceptions of social and emotional learning in rural Malawi

BACKGROUND

Social and emotional learning (SEL) positively impacts children's school achievement and adult productivity. Successful implementation of SEL relies on teachers' pedagogical beliefs and practices.

AIMS

We examined whether the Teachers' SEL Belief Scale designed in the United States is adoptable in low-income countries such as Malawi in response to a growing interest in teacher practices in SEL but a lack of research instruments in these countries.

SAMPLES

The data used in this study were from 432 teachers working in 34 randomly selected primary schools in Zomba, a rural district in Malawi.

METHODS

We used multiple-group confirmatory factory analysis to investigate the factor structure and the invariance of the adapted scale across teachers with different characteristics such as gender and training experience in SEL. When invariant, we compared group mean differences among teachers in our sample by gender and training experience.

RESULTS

We found that the Teachers' SEL Belief Scale measured a similar construct of pedagogical perceptions of SEL among the sampled teachers, and it functioned equivalently across teachers with different genders and training experiences. Female teachers had lower perceived institutional support for SEL instruction compared to male teachers. Untrained teachers had lower levels of pedagogical comfort as well as perceived support for SEL compared to trained teachers.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings validate the adaptability of the Teachers' SEL Belief Scale in low-income contexts such as Malawi. We did not find evidence of systematic bias relative to group membership. In addition, significantly lower pedagogical comfort and institutional support among female and untrained teachers suggest areas for policy intervention to improve teacher performance in SEL in Malawi.

Dimensionality and the Development of Cognitive Assessments for Children in Sub-Saharan Africa

Over the past decade, researchers have shown increased interest in examining the cognitive development of children in non-Western countries, often in connection with evaluations of health and educational interventions. However, many studies have used Western-developed measures without proper consideration of contextual validity. Across domains—from language to cognition to non-cognitive skills—this results in varying degrees of bias that call into question the findings of these studies. In this article, we focus in particular on the problem of differences in dimensionality perception between children in sub-Saharan Africa and those in Western countries. Although most Western children are exposed to extensive two-dimensional materials during early childhood, such as picture books and photographs, most rural African children are not. We therefore argue that assessments using two-dimensional stimuli, such as line drawings or patterns, may be inappropriate for capturing cognitive development in settings where such formats are unfamiliar to young children. We also discuss a modified assessment of non-verbal reasoning designed to be contextually appropriate for children in rural Africa—the Object-based Pattern Reasoning Assessment (OPRA). Created during a national study of pre-school child development in Zambia, this new assessment uses local materials such as beans and stones, requires little training to administer, and avoids potential instrument bias related to two-dimensionality among young children living in developing countries.

The impact of education on sexual behavior in sub-Saharan Africa: a review of the evidence

Many studies have attempted to determine the relationship between education and HIV status. However, a complete and causal understanding of this relationship requires analysis of its mediating pathways, focusing on sexual behaviors. We developed a series of hypotheses based on the differential effect of educational attainment on three sexual behaviors. We tested our predictions in a systematic literature review including 65 articles reporting associations between three specific sexual behaviors -- sexual initiation, number of partners, and condom use -- and educational attainment or school enrollment in sub-Saharan Africa. The patterns of associations varied by behavior. The findings for condom use were particularly convergent; none of the 44 studies using educational attainment as a predictor reviewed found that more educated people were significantly less likely to use condoms. Findings for sexual initiation and number of partners were more complex. The contrast between findings for condom use on the one hand and sexual initiation and number of partners on the other supports predictions based on our theoretical framework.