The BITSEA's reliability and validity among English and Spanish speaking low-income children in the U.S. born during the Covid-19 pandemic & its suitability for stressed communities
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Abstract
The BITSEA is a screening tool widely used by researchers, parents, and doctors to examine a child’s early socioemotional development. This tool has proven helpful in identifying children with potential behavioral problems or issues in areas of social competency. Past research has shown that the BITSEA has high reliability and validity, but this screening tool has not been psychometrically reevaluated in the U.S. for nearly a decade. This study used data from a longitudinal study, the Baby’s First Year study, which started collecting data on newborns one year before the COVID-19 pandemic began. This study explores the BITSEA’s current reliability and validity among young children in low-income English and Spanish-speaking families across the U.S. who were experiencing their early childhood socioemotional development during the pandemic and expands on these findings to infer the suitability of the BITSEA among both linguistic populations and among populations experiencing higher than normal levels of stress. The results indicate that the full BITSEA continues to retain decent levels of reliability among both English (Total BITSEA: α = .73; Problem Scale: α = .83; Competence Scale: α = .69) and Spanish-speaking populations (Total BITSEA: α = .73; Problem Scale: α = .8; Competence Scale: α = .72) and that its overall levels of validity are suitable for both language groups, but the predictive validity for the Spanish version of the Competence Scale was not supported as these results did not significantly correlate with children’s future CBCL 1.5-5 scores.