Measuring Rohingya Children’s Development: Cultural and Contextual Adaptation of IDELA

In this brief, NYU Global TIES for Children researchers describe a rapid iterative process of cultural, linguistic, and contextual adaptation and extension of child assessment tools for Rohingya Children in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. It includes three specific examples showcasing the rigorous, culturally responsive, equity-based approach to adaptation. This report also highlights some of the most critical findings from using this extended IDELA, known as IDELA-E, in our pilot study. Results suggest that IDELA-E is responsive to the environment in which the Rohingya children grow up and can capture their learning and development gains across multiple domains. Assessment using IDELA-E shows the age-based developmental progression of Rohingya children across these five domains: fine and gross motor, emergent literacy, emergent numeracy, socio-emotional, and executive function development. Overall, this brief highlights a rigorous process of cultural and contextual adaptation of tools for assessing children in a low-resourced context in the global south.