Assistant Professor Texas State University San Marcos, Texas, United States
Overview: This presentation addresses the issue of limited measurement tools available to estimate the children's rights implementation as defined by the UN Convention on the Right of the Child. This study tests potential measurement items to address this gap and discusses possible implications and ways to move forward.Proposal text:
Background: The effective implementation of children’s rights is impossible without measuring the outcomes of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Current literature does not provide a holistic way to measure the outcomes of children’s rights implementation. This limitation prevents this right-based framework from full contribution to academic discourse, policy development, and social work practice. Applying a conceptual framework that shapes children’s rights in three domains – protection, provision, and participation – to a recently released 2nd wave of International Child Well-Being Survey (ICWBS), a new measure of children’s rights implementation will be validated and based on the data collected from children and not generated by adults. Methodology: This study utilizes the ICWBS as secondary data source in order to compile and validate a children’s rights implementation scale. This dataset was collected from children in 16 countries. A subsample of the 12 year olds (n=18212) was utilized. Stratification and weights have been applied throughout the analysis. Twenty-one items were pulled from the ICWBS in order to represent the articles of the Convention. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in MPlus ver. 8.0 were utilized to validate the measure. Chronbach’s alpha was used in order to measure reliability of the scale. Convergent validity was established as a part of construct validity.
Results: Reliability analysis showed Cronbach’s Alpha estimate of .845 which can be considered as evidence of high level of consistency. Five factors were identified as a result of the initial exploratory factor analysis (EFA) including “Provision in School,” “Provision in Family” and “Provision in the Community” as well as “Participation in Family” and “Participation in School.” Confirmatory factor analysis was run to test the model fit for fourteen items identified as a result of EFA. Five goodness-of-fit indices were calculated to assess the global fit of the model. First, Chi-Square Test of Model Fitx χ2 = 1147.193 (df =72, p = .000) which was the only model fit index that has not met the standard requirement for good fit due to widely known issues with it being significant for large sample sizes. Other fit indices yielded excellent fit results including RMSEA = .029, CFI =.964, TLI = .955 and SRMR =.037. Convergent validity was established by correlating the children’s rights implementation scale with the Student Life Satisfaction Scale (r=.688, n=15243, p
Learning Objectives:
Identify gaps in the children's rights measurement
Define possible measurement items
Articulate the limitation of existing measurement approaches to the children's rights implementation