幼兒發展調查資料庫建置計畫(第二期)

Kids in Taiwan: National Longitudinal of Child Development & Care (KIT) is the first longitudinal study in Taiwan aiming (1) to examine the consistency and change in Taiwanese children’s health and cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor developmental trajectories, (2) to understand the home, child care, and school environments children are exposed to, and (3) to determine the long term impacts of family, child care, and school environments and experiences on children’s development. Two representative samples, three-month-old children (KIT-M3) and thirty six-month-old children (KIT-M36) will be tracked over time. Using census register as the sampling frame, this project adopts stratified two-stage probability-proportional-to-size sampling method, with county and person as the primary and secondary sampling units respectively. Data such as questionnaires completed by parents and teachers, individual tests on children’s cognitive, language and motor development, and children’s interviews will be collected in this study. So far, about seventy-two thousand parent, relative-and-friend, and educarer questionnaires have been collected, including six waves of data collection when the KIT-3M group were 3, 6, 12, 18, 24, 36 months old and four waves of data collection when the KIT-36M group were at the age of 3, 4, 5, and 6 years. Establishing a databank on child development in Taiwan will provide evidence-based information for policy making in children’s health, welfare, and child care and will also provide important implications for early prevention and early intervention programs for young children.