# **3. Data**

The main analyses in this paper use data on the younger cohort collected in 2013 (at age 5) and in 2016 (at age 8). The key outcomes of interest are (i) enrollment in different types of early childhood education services; (ii) child development outcomes using the Early Development Instrument (EDI); and (iii) tests scores in early grades of primary school.

We measure enrollment in three types of early childhood education services. The first are project playgroups, those established under the project’s block grant. The second are nonproject playgroups, which refer to all other playgroup services that exist in the communities. The third are kindergartens, which are early childhood education programs catering to children before they enroll in primary school. We collected information about enrollment in each type of service by collecting a retrospective enrollment history for each academic year from 2008 to the survey year from the primary caregiver of the child.

The EDI measures children’s school readiness across five domains: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills and general knowledge (Janus and Offord, 2007). The EDI has been validated and tested for reliability. Overall, the construct validity, predictive validity, and interrater reliability of the EDI in Indonesia are comparable to that found in other countries, making the EDI a suitable instrument for measuring school readiness in Indonesia (Brinkman et al. 2016). In this paper, we use the short-form of the caregiver-rated EDI.<sup>6</sup> We standardized the variables for each EDI domain to have a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1, using the mean and standard deviation of the comparison group in the younger cohort.

A school-based test was developed for this evaluation based on learning standards in Indonesian schools. Children were assessed in a classroom under the guidance of a member of the data collection team and no classroom teachers were present. The tests were divided into three parts: language (Bahasa Indonesia), mathematics, and abstract reasoning. <mark>The language test consisted of two sections. The first section (</mark> _<mark>match pictures</mark>_ <mark>) evaluated children’s phonological awareness (i.e., whether they can match pictures that start with a given sound) and letter recognition (i.e., whether they can match pictures that start with a given letter). The second section (</mark> _<mark>mention objects</mark>_ <mark>) assessed children’s vocabulary skills (i.e., whether they can name the word associated with a given image). The mathematics test included two sections. The first section (</mark> _<mark>summation</mark>_ <mark>) evaluated children’s ability to add and subtract (i.e., whether they can add to or subtract away from a set of objects). The second section (</mark> _<mark>order numbers</mark>_ <mark>) assessed children’s ability to recognize patterns (i.e., whether they can order one- to two- digit numbers in ascending and descending order). The abstract reasoning section was</mark> modeled on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices. Students were presented with an image that was missing a small section and asked to select the missing pieces from six options, based on color, pattern, and orientation. There were two versions of the overall test; a shorter test for 6 and 7 year-olds and a longer test for 8 and 9 year-olds. In this paper, we use the common set of items that were included in both versions of the test. We standardized the variables for each test domain to have a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1, using the mean and standard deviation of the comparison group in the younger cohort.

Baseline measures of child development were collected for the younger cohort when they were aged 1 and 2. The EDI is not an appropriate test for that age group so instead a measure of child development developed by the University of San Carlos Office of Population

> 6 We use the short-form to match previously published estimates in Brinkman et al 2017b with which we compare this paper’s findings. Results using the long-form of the EDI are qualitatively similar and are available upon request.

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