Administration

Administration in LEVANTE covers data collection from children, caregivers, and teachers.

Data collection with children

Funded sites have substantial flexibility around administration, but should strive whenever possible for consistent administration across children (e.g., all on tablets or all on computers) so as to avoid confounding of contextual factors and administration details; when this is not possible, explicit justification should be given.

School-based administration

• Funded sites must have access to primary caregivers for questionnaire completion, a plan for questionnaire administration, and follow-up for missing forms.
• There is a strong preference for sites following school-based administration to administer a survey to one teacher for each classroom. This survey is at the level of teacher and classroom characteristics and does not ask questions about individual students.
• There is also a preference for the availability of administrative records (e.g., standardized test scores).

In-person family-based administration

Funded sites – whether gathering data in-lab, at home, or in another setting – must have:

• Access to primary caregivers for questionnaire completion, a plan for caregiver form completion, and follow-up for missing forms
• A route for sending teacher surveys to teachers (perhaps by encouraging participating families to pass them on)
• A plan for a testing location, which can include participants’ homes, a clinic setting, library, or other appropriate location convenient to participants (include plan for ensuring families have access to a device and internet connection)
• A plan for who will monitor participants during individual assessment (e.g. caregiver, research assistant, etc.)

Remote family-based administration

Funded remote data collection sites must have plans for:

• Access to primary caregivers for questionnaire completion, a plan for caregiver form completion, and follow-up for missing forms
• Sending teacher surveys to teachers through participating families
• Infrastructure around remote data collection (e.g. internet access, devices, monitoring, etc.)

Administration guidelines by age

• For ages 2;0 – 4;11, participants should have an appropriate adult overseeing individual administration (e.g. teacher, research assistant, caregiver). Adults should receive a briefing on helping the child to access the platform, stay on task, and move through the assessment queue while refraining from assisting the child with the tasks.
• Individual administration as per above is strongly recommended for children 5;0 - 6;11, but small group-based administration might be possible.
• For ages 5;0 – 11;11, individual administration as described above OR group based administration can be employed. For group administration (e.g. in a classroom setting), participants should receive an introductory description of the process, information on how to ask for help, and an emphasis on the importance of staying on task.

Timing

Measures are under active development at the moment. Projected timing for administration of core measures is as follows:

• Child assessment: <60 minutes
• Caregiver questionnaires: <30 minutes if completed directly by caregiver, <60 minutes if conducted via interview; timing can vary substantially depending on population
• Teacher questionnaires (if school-based): 15 minutes

At the discretion of sites, child assessments can be broken into 2-3 sessions.

Data collection with caregivers and teachers

Caregiver and teacher surveys can be administered electronically via links. This is the preferred method of administration.

Sites that are not recruiting through schools need not administer teacher surveys.

In the case that electronic administration is not possible, other possible methods include:

• Phone or in-person interview with responses entered by an enumerator on a tablet or computer
• Paper administration

Paper administration is dispreferred due to challenges associated with re-entering data into the LEVANTE dashboard.