“Does Universally accessible child care protect children from late talking? Results from a Norwegian population-based prospective study”.

The purpose of this study is divided into three parts. Firstly, the authors aim to examine whether children who attend daycare in the first three years of their lives have a smaller risk of developing delayed speech when checked for different variables, for example early social communication skills before starting at a daycare facility. Secondly, the purpose of this study is to examine whether the number of hours the children spend at the daycare facility in the first three years of their lives is connected with delayed speech at the age of three. Finally, the authors aim to examine the potential gender differences in relation to daycare schemes and delayed speech.

The study shows that childcare in daycare schemes at the age of one year does not relate to delayed speech at the age of three. However, the study shows that children who were in daycare when they were 18 months old, and children who were in daycare when they were three years old had a significantly lower risk of delayed speech compared to children who had not been in daycare: Fewer girls and boys who were in formal daycare schemes are categorised as late speaking than children in informal childcare schemes. The study shows that children who attend daycare full-time, are more likely to have normal language development at the age of three than children who only attend daycare part-time. The majority of children were in informal childcare schemes at the age of one, however at 18 months 60% were in formal daycare schemes, and at the age of three most children were in formal daycare schemes. A total of 4.6% of the children participating in the study were assessed to be late speakers at the age of 36 months. There was a significant gender difference: 6.5% of boys compared to 2.6% of girls were late speakers.

Data in this study was collected from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). MoBA was launched in 1999 by inviting pregnant women undergoing a routine scan in their 17th week of pregnancy to take part in the study through a questionnaire survey. More than 100,000 women took part in the study. Data was collected at the 17th, 22nd and 30th week of their pregnancy, and when their child was six, 18 and 36 months old, respectively. In the study, this data set was compared with register data from the Norwegian medical birth register. This current study includes respondents who answered all six questionnaires in 2009, i.e. 20,528 families. A total of 609 of these families was excluded on the basis of reports of children with hearing impairments, deafness, cerebral palsy or indications of Down’s syndrome or cleft palates.
Delayed speech was measured on the basis of parent assessments of their 36-month-old children’s ability to speak in complete sentences. Children who were not assessed to speak in relatively complete sentences by their parents were categorised as having delayed speech. Data material was analysed in the statistics software program SPSS.

Lekhal, R., Zachrisson, H.D., Wang, M.V., Schjølberg, S. & von Soest, T. (2011). “Does Universally accessible child care protect children from late talking? Results from a Norwegian population-based prospective study”. Early Child Development and Care, 181(8), 1007-1019.