Testing Measures of Refugee Camp Environment, Caregiver Mental Health, and Child Social-Emotional Development Among the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar

As a part of the Play to Learn initiative, New York University’s Global TIES for Children, along with Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee (BRAC) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), collected pilot data in the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar district, Bangladesh, with the aim of developing culturally sensitive measures for assessing child development and caregiver well- being. The Rohingya are an understudied population with a unique linguistic and cultural history, and as such few survey measures exist that have been validated in areas that are important to early childhood development. Many measures commonly used to assess children’s development and immediate environment in low and middle income country contexts; and in humanitarian contexts; have not been previously used in the Rohingya context. Given the lack of culturally sensitive measures for this group that are relevant to early childhood development, the goal of the study outlined in this brief was to assess survey measures relevant to children’s development specifc to the Rohingya refugee camps. Specifcally, we measured experiences of the refugee camps, caregivers’ well-being, and child social-emotional development among families with pre primary-aged (3-4 year old) children.

In this brief, we provide a snapshot of the process we went through to test scales in this context. We outline the steps involved in selecting, adapting, and testing these scales to examine their suitability and prepare them for large-scale use. We then present analyses of these scales, including factor structure, reliability, validity, and scale inter-correlations. We conclude with a summary of what we learn from our results and future directions.