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Table 1 Predictors of Early School Success Identified from Literature Review*

From: Early identification of young children at risk for poor academic achievement: preliminary development of a parent-report prediction tool

Relative size of effect

Predictor

Strong

â—‹ Maternal Education [12, 16, 18, 19, 32, 56]

 

â—‹ Gender [12, 15, 20, 23, 24, 31, 32]

 

â—‹ Family income [15, 16, 20, 23, 27, 29, 32, 36, 56]

 

â—‹ Low birth weight [10, 12, 13, 19, 20, 23, 25, 29, 31, 32]

Moderate

â—‹ Prematurity [23, 31]

 

â—‹ Prenatal cigarette exposure [13, 15, 20]

 

â—‹ Maternal affect [27, 31]

Weak

â—‹ Maternal age [12, 15, 19, 20, 23]

 

â—‹ Parental cognitive ability [15, 20]

 

â—‹ Maternal warmth [30]

 

â—‹ Maternal sensitivity [56]

 

â—‹ Punitive parenting [30]

 

â—‹ Television viewing [37]

 

â—‹ Prenatal care [15, 19]

 

â—‹ Early hospitalization [29]

 

â—‹ Second-hand smoke [20, 31]

Mixed

â—‹ Race/ethnicity [12, 15, 20, 24, 29, 32] (mostly strong, but weak or not significant in multivariate adjustment)

 

â—‹ Family structure [12, 23, 24, 32](mixed, mostly strong)

 

â—‹ Family size [24, 31, 32] (two studies are moderate to strong, one study not accounting for family structure is mixed)

 

â—‹ Prenatal alcohol exposure [20] (mixed-weak to moderate for reading & NS for math)

Other potentially important factors in the literature

â—‹ Sociodemographics: parental literacy, parental health literacy, birth intervals, immigrant status, English proficiency, parental employment

 

â—‹ Prenatal/childhood medical problems:

 

   ■ Health care: age-appropriate pediatric care, age-appropriate immunizations

 

   ■ Nutritional deficits: failure to thrive, underweight, iron deficiency

 

   ■ Early special medical care/chronic conditions: visual ability, ear infections, low APGAR

 

   ■ Development: early language and literacy skills, cognitive ability, developmental disability, motor skills, deafness, speech defects

 

â—‹ Behavior and personality characteristics: internalizing and externalizing behavior, social functioning, attention, self-regulation, affect, temperament

 

â—‹ Social environment

 

   ■ Prenatal environment: maternal mental health, unintended pregnancy

 

   ■ Home environment: lead exposure, family conflict, number of books, reading to children

 

   ■ Parenting: attachment, developmental and educational expectations, exposure to speech

 

   ■ Child care: type, provider ratio, provider education, classroom features, accreditation, hours

 

â—‹ Neighborhood conditions: poverty, affluence, male joblessness, safety

  1. * Details regarding literature review, data extraction, and predictor classification are presented in Appendix A. In brief, predictors were categorized as strong, moderate, or weak based on the strength of the association (or effect size) with early school success in relation to the scale of the predictor. For example, a predictor with a broad range (e.g., income) was considered strong if the beta was 0.1 whereas for a predictor with a narrow range (e.g., gender), a beta greater than 2.5 was considered strong.