Publications

This study examines how center-based parenting interventions aimed at improving early child development in rural China affect the mental health of caregivers. Data from an analytic sample of 615 caregiver–child dyads (children aged 6 to 24 months, 48.5% girls; data collection: 2015–2017) in a 2-year cluster randomized controlled trial conducted in 100 villages showed that the intervention had no significant effect on caregiver depressive (β = − .047, SE = .079), anxiety (β = .040, SE = .076), or stress (β = .032, SE = .081) symptoms. Subgroup analyses found no significant difference in effects on mental health by prespecified characteristics after adjustment for multiple comparisons, except that the caregivers of children without social–emotional delay at baseline exhibited lower depression scores after the intervention (β = − .205, SE = .097, p = .043). The findings suggest that the center-based parenting intervention focused solely on strengthening parenting skills may be insufficient to improve caregiver mental health over 2 years.

Language development and the home language environment during early childhood are critical for long-term child outcomes. Caregiver mental health may influence early language outcomes directly, but it can also introduce perception bias, which refers to the discrepancies between caregiver self-assessments and the actual status of child language outcomes. This study examines the associations between caregiver mental health symptoms and (1) child language development and home language environment, and (2) caregiver perception bias in self-report assessments of child language development and home language environment. The study recruited 137 rural Chinese households with children aged 16–24 months. Objective measures of child language development and the home language environment were collected using Language Environment Analysis (LENA) technology. Caregiver perception biases were measured by the discrepancies between the objective and caregiver self-report measurements. Results show that caregiver anxiety and stress symptoms were linked to poor child language development, while symptoms of depression and anxiety were associated with less stimulating home language environment. Caregivers with depressive and anxiety symptoms tended to overestimate their children’s language development, and those with depressive symptoms also overestimated their own verbal inputs. These findings call for caution when implementing self-report assessments of early childhood development.

China’s urbanization has created growing peri-urban communities, where children face challenges to early childhood development (ECD) despite proximity to developed urban areas. Little is known about how the environmental factors of ECD differ between rural migrants and new urban residents. To address this, we sampled 77 peri-urban households with 18–24-month-old Han Chinese children to examine the associations between early cognitive and language development, parental self-efficacy, stimulating parenting practices, and the home language environment measured with Language Environment Analysis (LENA). We find that rural migrants and new urban residents exhibited no significant difference in any child or household characteristic except parental residency. There was no significant difference in the family environment factors or early cognitive or language development, either. However, parental self-efficacy and stimulating parenting practices both predicted better cognitive and language development in rural migrant households, whereas only conversation turn counts predicted better language development in new urban resident households.

Purpose: This mixed-methods study examined how differences in parental time, knowledge, and economic constraints, as well as community socioeconomic contexts, may contribute to differences in home language environment and child language ability outcomes between peri-urban and rural households in China.

Method: We conducted an explanatory sequential mixed-methods analysis using data from 158 children aged 18–24 months among peri-urban and rural households with low socioeconomic status (SES) in southwestern China. Audio recordings were collected from each household and analyzed using the Language ENvironment Analysis system. The Mandarin version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories was administered to each child's primary caregiver. We also conducted qualitative interviews with primary caregivers in 31 peri-urban and 32 rural households. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded.

Results: The quantitative results reveal that children in peri-urban households heard less adult speech and had lower language ability than children in rural households. Directed content analysis of interviews found that peri-urban caregivers faced more severe time constraints and less favorable community socioeconomic contexts than rural primary caregivers. Taken together, these findings suggest that differences in time constraints and community socioeconomic contexts between the two populations are the most likely factors contributing to the inferior language environment and language ability among children in peri-urban households.

Conclusion: The mixed-methods study indicated that parental time constraints and community socioeconomic contexts should be considered alongside SES for a comprehensive understanding of factors influencing parental investment in the home language environment in China.

In rural China, there exists a gender gap in academic achievement where girls outperform boys, suggesting similar differences in early language development. Moreover, recent research has revealed that children in peri-urban communities have worse language outcomes than children in rural communities. This study examines the impact of gender on early language development in low-SES, peri-urban Chinese communities. Data from 81 children (56.79% boys) aged 18-24 months (Mage = 21.16) living in peri-urban China were collected using two caregiver-reported tests for child language development and ability, and language environment analysis technology for measuring the home language environment. Results show that in peri-urban communities, girls were generally exposed to more adult-child conversations and showed higher counts of vocalizations than did boys; girls scored higher on language development measures than did boys. The implications of these findings on the gender gap and child development are discussed.

Rural girls in China stay in school longer than boys and outperform them in many subjects. This gender gap suggests analogous disparities in early childhood development, a key factor in later educational outcomes. This study examines gender disparities in social-emotional development among 1,301 children aged 18–30 months in rural China. Results indicate that male children trail their female counterparts by 0.18 SD on average on the scale of standardized ASQ:SE score. A large share of the difference is driven by the bottom 10 % of children, where the magnitude of the gender gap (0.34 SD) is 1.9 times larger than at the median (0.19 SD). Demographic characteristics are uncorrelated with the gender gap in heterogeneity analysis, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying observed gender disparities are similar across rural Chinese households.

To examine the association between electronic media exposure and parental language input, Language Environment Analysis technology was used to collect data on electronic media exposure and parental language input in 158 peri-urban and rural households with children aged 18–24 months in southwestern China. The sounds children made and the sounds they heard were quantified. Multiple linear regression and quantile linear regression were used to determine the relationship between electronic media and the outcomes of interest. The results showed that each hour of electronic media exposure was associated with reduced conversational turn count (p < .05) and child vocalization count (p < .05). A large share of the reduction was driven by the higher quantile of children. Reductions associated with electronic exposure were also observed in number of segments and conversational turns. These results may help explain the association between child electronic media exposure and language delay in an under-studied and at-risk population.

EdTech,  which  includes  computer  assisted  learning  (CAL),  online  education,  and  remote instruction,  was  expanding  rapidly  even  before  the  current  full-scale  substitution  for  in-person learning  at  all  levels  of  education  around  the  world  because  of  COVID-19.  Studies  of  CAL interventions  often  find  positive  effects,  however,  these “CAL  programs”  often  include  non-technology based inputs such as more time on learning and instructional support by facilitators in addition to technology-based components. In this paper, we discuss the possible channels by which CAL programs affect academic outcomes among schoolchildren. We isolate the technology-based effects  of  CAL  from  the  total  program  effects  by  designing  a  novel  multi-treatment  field experiment with more than four thousand schoolchildren in rural China. For the full sample, we find null effects for both the total CAL program and the technology-based effects of CAL (which are measured relative to a traditional pencil-and-paper learning treatment) on math test scores. For boys, however, we find a positive and statistically significant effect of the CAL program, but  do not find evidence of a positive effect for the technology-based effect of CAL. When focusing on grades, we find evidence of positive CAL program effects but find null effects when we isolate the technology-based effects of CAL. Our empirical results suggest that the “Tech” in EdTech may have  relatively  small  additional  effects  on  academic  outcomes  and  yet  that  tech  programs  can substitute at least to a certain extent for traditional learning.

Despite the proliferation of education technologies (EdTech) in education, past reviews that examine their effectiveness in the context of low- and middle-income countries are few and rarely seek to include studies published in languages other than English. This systematic review investigates the effectiveness of educational technology on primary and secondary student learning outcomes in China via a systematic search of both English- and Chinese-language databases. Eighteen (18) unique studies in 21 manuscripts on the effectiveness of EdTech innovations in China met the eligibility criteria. The majority of these evaluate computer aided self-led learning software packages designed to improve student learning (computer assisted learning, CAL), while the rest evaluate the use of education technology to improve classroom instruction (ICI) and remote instruction (RI). The pooled effect size of all included studies indicates a small, positive effect on student learning (0.13 SD, 95% CI [0.10, 0.17]). CAL used a supplement to existing educational inputs – which made up the large majority of positive effect sizes – and RI programs consistently showed positive and significant effects on learning. Our findings indicate no significant differences or impacts on the overall effect based on moderating variables such as the type of implementation approach, contextual setting, or school subject area. Taken together, while there is evidence of the positive impacts of two kinds of EdTech (supplemental computer assisted learning and remote instruction) in China, more evidence is needed to determine the effectiveness of other approaches.

The objective of the current study is to examine the impact of an in-school computer-assisted learning (CAL) intervention on the math achievement of rural students in Taiwan, including a marginalized subgroup of rural students called Xinzhumin, and the factors associated with this impact. In order to achieve this, we conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial involving 1,840 fourth- and fifth-grade students at 95 schools in four relatively poor counties and municipalities of Taiwan during the spring semester of 2019. While the Intention-To-Treat (ITT) analysis found that the CAL intervention had no significant impacts on student math achievement, the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) analysis revealed significant associations with the math performance of the most active 20% of students in the treatment group. LATE estimates suggest that using CAL for more than 20 minutes per week for ten weeks corresponds to higher math test scores, both in general (0.16 SD–0.22 SD), and for Xinzhumin students specifically (0.3 SD–0.34 SD). Teacher-level characteristics were associated with compliance rates.

In low- and middle-income countries, urbanization has spurred the expansion of peri-urban communities, or urban communities of formerly rural residents with low socioeconomic status. The growth of these communities offers researchers an opportunity to measure the associations between the level of urbanization and the home language environment (HLE) among otherwise similar populations. Data were collected in 2019 using Language Environment Analysis observational assessment technology from 158 peri-urban and rural households with Han Chinese children (92 males, 66 females) aged 18–24 months in China. Peri-urban children scored lower than rural children in measures of the HLE and language development. In both samples, child age, gender, maternal employment, and sibling number were positively correlated with the HLE, which was in turn correlated with language development.

The home language environment is a significant correlate of early childhood development outcomes; however, less is known about this mechanism in rural and peri-urban China where rates of developmental delay are as high as 52%. This study examines associations between the home language environment and child development in a sample of 158 children (58% boys) aged 18–24 months (Mage = 21.5) from rural and peri-urban households in Western China. Results show a significant association between adult-child conversation count and language development, suggesting the home language environment may be a mechanism for child development in rural and peri-urban China. 22.5% of the sample were at risk of language delay. Mother’s employment and child’s age were significant factors in the home language environment.

Besides increasing knowledge, there is another potential mechanism at work when information is delivered to a treatment group: increasing the salience of existing knowledge. We use data from a randomized controlled trial of a health information campaign to explore the relative importance of this additional mechanism in a real-world environment. The health information campaign addressed the benefits of wearing eyeglasses and provided information meant to address the common misconceptions that contribute to low adoption rates of eyeglasses. In total, our study sample included 931 students with poor vision (mostly myopia), their parents, and their homeroom teachers in 84 primary schools in rural China. We find that the health information campaign was able to successfully increase student ownership and wearing of eyeglasses, relative to a control group. We demonstrate that the campaign had a larger impact when levels of preexisting information among certain subgroups of participants—namely, parents of students—were higher while we simultaneously provided new information to others. This suggests that the interaction between directed attention (i.e., salience) and baseline knowledge is important. We do not, however, find similar increases among teachers or the students themselves and additionally find no impacts on academic outcomes.

Parental investment in the home language environment during the earliest years is a critical predictor of early language development. Because most studies investigating the home language environment and child language development have been conducted in Western, high-income, and developed settings, less is known about such environments in low- or middle-income settings. This study was conducted in a peri-urban area in Southwestern China in a sample of 81 rural migrant and urbanized farmer families with children aged 18-24 months. The home language environment was measured using Language Environment Analysis (LENA) recorders and software, while early language development was measured using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories expressive vocabulary scale. Findings reveal large and substantial variation in the sample's home language environments and a strong association between the home language environment and child language development. Certain demographic characteristics, such as household resources, maternal employment, and gender, are associated with the home language environment. These findings highlight the needs for interventions specifically targeting the home language environment to improve early language development of young children and for more research on early childhood development in peri-urban China.

Using premier Language Environment Analysis technology to measure and analyze the home language environment, this observational study aims to describe the home language environment and child language ability, drawing on empirical data from 77 households with children aged 18–24 months from rural China. The results show large variation in measures of the home language environment and early language ability, similar to other rural Chinese samples. Results also demonstrate significant correlations between child age and the home language environment, maternal employment and the home language environment, father’s educational attainment and the home language environment, adult–child conversations and early language ability, and child vocalizations and early language ability.

Background
A rich language environment is an important element of a nurturing home environment. Despite their proven importance, vocabulary and conversation have been shown to vary widely across households—even within the same socio-economic class. One significant gap in the existing literature is its nearly exclusive geographic focus on Western and developed settings, with little attention given to poorer communities in lower/middle income countries. The purpose of this study was to empirically illustrate the characteristics of the home language environment in the low SES, non-Western cultural setting of rural China.

Methods
Using Language Environment Analysis (LENA) automated language-analysis system, this study measured the home language environment of 38 children aged 20-27 months in Northwest rural China. Our primary measures of the home language environment were Adult Word Count (AWC), Conversational Turn Count (CTC) and Child Vocalization Count (CVC). Multivariate linear regression models were used to examine the association between home language environment and family/child characteristics, and language skills (Measured by MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory score).

Results
In this paper, by comparison, we found that the home language environment of our rural sample fell far behind that of urban households. We also identify significant, positive correlations between language skills and both AWC and CTC. Our analysis finds no significant correlations between home language environment and family/child characteristics.

Conclusion
In this paper, we present the first ever findings using the LENA system to measure the home language environment of young children from poor rural communities in China. We found that the home language environment of lower-SES household was significantly worse than high-SES households, and demonstrated the importance of the home language environment to language skills, pointing to a need for more high-quality studies of the home language environment in rural China to better understand possible mechanisms behind low levels of parent-child language engagement and ways to improve the home language environment.

Research suggests that elements of the family environment may have significant associations with cognitive and language development outcomes. Less is known, however, about the family environment in peri-urban China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0-3 years are as high as 51% and 54%, respectively. Using data collected from 81 peri-urban households with toddlers aged 18-24 months in Southwestern China, this study examines the associations between stimulating parenting practices, the home language environment, and parental self-efficacy, with cognitive and language development. The results indicate that stimulating parenting practices was significantly associated with cognitive development, the home language environment was significantly associated with language development, and parental self-efficacy was significantly associated with cognitive development. The implications of such findings reveal several mechanisms for supporting healthy cognitive and language development among toddlers from peri-urban China.

Despite major advancements in China’s K-12 educational outcomes over the past several decades, large regional inequities in academic achievement still exist, a proximal cause of which are gaps in teaching quality. Although conventional approaches to improving teaching quality for disadvantaged populations have overall been unsuccessful in China (i.e., student relocation to better-resourced urban schools, attracting high-quality teachers to low-resource rural schools, and rural teacher training), technology-assisted instruction may play a role in bridging these gaps. This paper explores why conventional approaches to improving teaching have not been effective in rural China and then describes the potential applications of technology-assisted instruction based on the small but growing body of empirical literature evaluating such interventions in other low- and middle-income countries. The paper concludes that while other (non-tech) interventions have thus far been ineffective at raising teaching quality, China may be uniquely positioned to harness technology-assisted instruction due to a favorable ecosystem for the scaling of EdTech in rural areas, though much more experimental research is necessary to assess which approaches and technologies are most cost-effective and how to best scale them.

Family-level factors that characterize the home environment are critical inputs to early language and cognitive development, and potential mechanisms for improving developmental outcomes in vulnerable populations. Many studies conducted in high-income and Western settings highlight stimulating parenting, the home language environment, and parental self-efficacy as possible mechanisms of early development, though less is known about how these family-level factors impact child development in low- or middle-income settings. Even less is known about these family-level factors and early childhood development in rural China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0–3 years are as high as 45% and 46%, respectively. Using data collected from 77 rural households with children aged 18–24 months in Southwestern China, this study examines the associations between stimulating parenting, the home language environment, and parental self-efficacy, and early cognitive and language development. The results indicate that stimulating parenting was significantly associated with cognitive, language, and overall development; the home language environment was only significantly associated with language development; and parental self-efficacy was not significantly associated with any developmental outcomes. The implications of such findings reveal mechanisms for supporting healthy child development in rural China.

Although eyeglasses have been considered a cost-effective way to combat myopia, the empirical evidence of its impacts on improving learning outcomes is inconsistent. This paper provides empirical evidence examining the effect of providing eyeglasses on academic performance between provinces with a different economic level in western China. Overall, we find a significant impact in Intention-to-Treat analysis and a large and significant local average treatment effect of providing free eyeglasses to students in the poor province but not in the other. The difference in impact between the two provinces is not a matter of experimental design, implementation, or partial compliance. Instead, we find that the lack of impact in the wealthier provinces is mainly due to less blackboard usage in class and wealthier households. Our study found that providing free eyeglasses to disadvantaged groups boosted their academic performance more than to their counterparts.

The objectives of this paper were to examine the risk of depression and depressive symptoms among Han and minority children and adolescents in rural China, the links between academic performance and depressive symptoms, and the prevalence of these links among specific subgroups. A total of 8392 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students at 105 sample rural schools in eight low-income counties and districts in a prefectural-level city in Southwestern China were randomly selected using a three-step sampling strategy. A total of 51% of the sample were female (SD = 0.50), and the age range was 7 to 19 years (mean = 11.35 years; SD = 1.05). Using the Patient Health Questionnaire 8-item depression scale, the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the sample was assessed, while data on students’ academic performance (standardized math test) and demographic characteristics were also collected. Our results show that the rates of major depression were 19% for Han students, 18% for Tibetan students, and 22% for Yi students; the rates of severe depression were 2% for Han and Tibetan students, and 3% for Yi students. Yi students were at significantly higher risks for major and severe depression than Han students. We conducted multivariate regression and heterogeneous analyses. Academic performance was negatively and significantly correlated to depressive symptoms. Across the whole sample, students with lower math scores, minority students, boys, younger students, and students with migrant parents were most vulnerable to depressive symptoms. The heterogeneous analysis suggests that among poor-performing students, subgroups at higher risk for depression include boys, non-boarding students, and students whose mothers had graduated from high school or above. These findings indicate a need to improve mental health outcomes of rural Han and minority primary school students, targeting academic performance for possible intervention.

This study documents the COVID-19 disease-control measures enacted in rural China and examines the economic and social impacts of these measures. We conducted two rounds of surveys with 726 randomly selected village informants across seven provinces. Strict disease-control measures have been universally enforced and appear to have been successful in limiting disease transmission in rural communities. The infection rate in our sample was 0.001 per cent, a rate that is near the national average outside of Hubei province. None of the villages reported any COVID-19-related deaths. For a full month during the quarantine, the rate of employment of rural workers was essentially zero. Even after the quarantine measures were lifted, nearly 70 per cent of the villagers still were unable to work owing to workplace closures. Although action has been taken to mitigate the potential negative effects, these disease-control measures might have accelerated the inequality between rural and urban households in China.

Rural China has seen an increase in its migrant workers returning home. As a result, many of these workers’ children, who had previously boarded at school, needed to return home as well. While the existing research indicates that boarding affects the development of disadvantaged children, the effect of the switch to nonboarding on the growth of vulnerable boarding children remains unknown. Using two-stage data from 20,594 fourth- and fifth-grade students in rural Shaanxi and Gansu provinces as well as the difference-in-differences method, this study estimates the impact of switching to nonboarding on the academic performance and mental health of vulnerable boarding students. The results suggest that the shift toward nonboarding significantly reduces boarding students’ academic performance, and further testing shows that these results are robust. Additionally, the switch to nonboarding insignificantly increased the standardized mental health scores of rural primary school students but significantly increased their standardized impulsive tendency scores. Heterogeneity analysis found that boarding students whose mothers had lower educational achievement or whose families belonged to lower economic levels had poorer academic performance after switching, while boarding students whose parents had higher education achievement or myopia possessed better mental health after switching. This study offers novel, policy-relevant insights into potential strategies that would improve the academic performance and mental health of students who transition to nonboarding, especially those with low-educated parents and those belonging to poor families.