Nutritional Risk in Early Childhood and School Readiness
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Nutrition in early childhood is important for healthy growth and development. Achieving school readiness is considered one of the most important developmental milestones for young children. Objectives The purpose of this study is to determine if nutritional risk in early childhood is associated with school readiness in kindergarten. Methods A prospective cohort study was conducted through The Applied Research Group for Kids (TARGet Kids!) primary care research network in Toronto, Canada, 2015–2020. Nutritional risk was measured (18 mo to 5 y) using validated parent-completed questionnaires called Nutrition Screening for Toddlers and Preschoolers (NutriSTEP). High nutritional risk was categorized as scores ≥21. School readiness was measured using the validated teacher-completed Early Developmental Instrument (EDI), which measures 5 developmental domains in kindergarten (2 y of schooling, ages 4–6 y, before they enter grade 1). Vulnerability indicates scores lower than a population-based cutoff at the 10th percentile on at least 1 domain. Multiple logistic and linear regression models were conducted adjusting for relevant confounders. Results The study included 896 children: 53% were male, 9% had high nutritional risk, and 17% were vulnerable on the EDI. A 1-SD increase in NutriSTEP total score was associated with 1.54 times increased odds of being vulnerable on the EDI among children in year 2 of kindergarten (P = 0.001). High nutritional risk cutoff was associated with 4.28 times increased odds of being vulnerable on the EDI among children in year 2 of kindergarten (P < 0.001). NutriSTEP total score and high nutritional risk were associated with lower scores on all 5 EDI domains, with the strongest association observed for the domains of language and cognitive development and communication skills and general knowledge. Conclusions Higher nutritional risk in early childhood is associated with lower school readiness in year 2 of kindergarten. Nutritional interventions early in life may offer opportunities to enhance school readiness. This trial was registered http://www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01869530.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".