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In 2015, it was estimated that 41% of Africa’s population were children less than 15 years of age. Most of these children are exposed to multiple risk factors which may compromise their developmental outcomes. It is therefore important to develop intervention programs and strategies to address developmental problems faced by African children, if these children are to achieve their promise of propelling Africa to greater heights. Yet the evidence base for developing the required intervention strategy is not strong due to the underrepresentation of data from sub-Saharan Africa in the developmental psychology literature. We set out to fill this gap by putting together a handbook which synthesizes the evidence that can be used as resource by students, practitioners, and policy makers. In this chapter, we have provided a rationale for the book, summarized the theoretical and conceptual issues guiding the book, and lastly summarized the chapters in the book. This information provides the reader with a brief overview of the book.

Paternal involvement has been observed to positively influence developmental outcomes among children. Fathers’ engagement and investment (both tangible and non-tangible) in the child’s future are seen as the pathway through which fathers influence child development. In this chapter, we have highlighted both empirical and theoretical work regarding the associations between paternal involvement and child outcomes, looking both at global and African-based literature. Additionally, data from a small qualitative study from Kilifi, Kenya is presented to get insight into what is perceived to be the role of a father in a rural Kenyan setting. Based on these results, implications for research and practice are drawn and discussed.

Infectious diseases contribute significantly to child mortality in Africa; however, mortality rates only represent part of the problem. Among those who survive, cognitive, educational, and behavioral impairments have been reported. In the current chapter, I highlight the neurocognitive deficits, mental health problems, and poor educational outcomes associated with exposure to infectious diseases early in life. Special attention is paid to outcomes of HIV-infected children and children exposed to malaria. The chapter concludes by highlighting two approaches to intervention that have been observed to remediate some of the adverse effects of exposure to infections. Given the prevalence of infectious diseases in the African context, there are huge adverse effects and loss in human potential associated with childhood infectious diseases; identifying points of interventions and implementing evidence-based intervention for children infected with these conditions need to be a priority for applied developmental sciences.

Researchers and practitioners interested in monitoring child development in the African context often feel hampered by the lack of appropriate scales and measures. Given this shortage, it would be possible for them to adopt (an existing instrument), adapt (an existing instrument), or assemble (a new instrument) as a means of dealing with the problem. We discuss and highlight the pros and cons of each of these procedures. In addition, we propose systematic procedures that can be used to carry different processes (i.e., adoption, adaptation, or assembly) alongside approaches for evaluating the level of success in providing an adequate measure for the context in which they are working.

This study aims to evaluate a number of procedures that have been proposed to enhance cross–cultural comparability of personality and value data. A priori procedures (anchoring vignettes and direct measures of response styles (i.e. acquiescence, extremity, midpoint responding, and social desirability), a posteriori procedures focusing on data transformations prior to analysis (ipsatization and item parcelling), and two data modelling procedures (treating data as continuous vs as ordered categories) were compared using data collected from university students in 16 countries. We found that (i) anchoring vignettes showed lack of invariance, so they were not bias–free; (ii) anchoring vignettes showed higher internal consistencies than raw scores where all other correction procedures, notably ipsatization, showed lower internal consistencies; (iii) in measurement invariance testing, no procedure yielded scalar invariance; anchoring vignettes and item parcelling slightly improved comparability, response style correction did not affect it, and ipsatization resulted in lower comparability; (iv) treating Likert–scale data as categorical resulted in higher levels of comparability; (v) factor scores of scales extracted from different procedures showed similar correlational patterning; and (vi) response style correction was the only procedure that suggested improvement in external validity of country–level conscientiousness. We conclude that, although no procedure resolves all comparability issues, anchoring vignettes, parcelling, and treating data as ordered categories seem promising to alleviate incomparability. We advise caution in uncritically applying any of these procedures. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology

This paper investigated the effects of corrections for scale usage preference in seven Latin American countries, Portugal and Spain in student self-reports in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). These targeted countries tend to show a strong tendency of expressing strong opinions and self-enhancement, which can pose serious validity threats in cross-cultural comparisons of self-reports. We examined to what extent score corrections, that have been proposed, would change the patterning of the cross-cultural differences. We corrected for the scale usage preferences in a measure of teacher support among 39,045 students in nine countries, based on extreme response style, overclaiming, and anchoring vignettes, respectively. These measures showed different effects: (1) All correction methods helped to improve measurement invariance, although the correction based on anchoring was less effective in reaching scalar invariance compared with the correction of extreme response style overclaiming; (2) controlling for extreme response style and overclaiming changed the mean score of Spain to a greater extent than other countries, which seems to present a more realistic patterning, whereas the changes on correlations with other measures were rather limited. The use of anchored scores led to drastic changes both in means and correlations. A firm conclusion about which method is to be preferred cannot be given as there is no evidence which method enhances the validity of scores in these countries more. We discuss the necessity and practicability of correction methods. (DIPF/Orig.)