Work

Attrition in a large‐scale habituation task administered at home

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Infant research often struggles with selective samples, especially when focusing on behavioural measures, such as those drawn from habituation tasks. However, selectivity may threaten the generalizability and interpretation of results, which is why the current study investigates attrition in a habituation task administered in a household setting in 7-month-old infants. We used a large-scale German dataset, focusing on the children's socioeconomic background, and investigated two aspects of attrition, namely, participation and task completion. The findings suggest significant effects of the children's socioeconomic background on attrition: Maternal education, parental occupation, household income and household language (German vs. other) were positively related to participation and task completion. The analyses indicate that multiple barriers may prevent parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds from letting their children participate. The study concludes with a critical discussion of possible mechanisms of selectivity in behavioural measures as well as the household setting, in which the data were collected.

Source: British Journal of Developmental Psychology

DOI: 10.1111/bjdp.12528

Authors: Maximilian Seitz, Dave Möwisch, Manja Attig

Institution: Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,240