Measuring the intangible resources caregivers need to provide nurturing care during the complementary feeding period: a scoping review in low- and lower-middle-income countries.

OBJECTIVE

Caregivers require tangible (e.g. food and financial) and intangible resources to provide care to ensure child health, nutrition and development. Intangible resources include beliefs and knowledge, education, self-efficacy, perceived physical health, mental health, healthy stress levels, social support, empowerment, equitable gender attitudes, safety and security and time sufficiency. These intangible caregiver resources are included as intermediate outcomes in nutrition conceptual frameworks yet are rarely measured as part of maternal and child nutrition research or evaluations. To facilitate their measurement, this scoping review focused on understudied caregiver resources that have been measured during the complementary feeding period in low- and lower-middle-income countries.

DESIGN

We screened 9,232 abstracts, reviewed 277 full-text articles and included 163 articles that measured caregiver resources related to complementary feeding or the nutritional status of children 6 months to 2 years of age.

RESULTS

We identified measures of each caregiver resource, though the number of measures and quality of descriptions varied widely. Most articles (77 %) measured only one caregiver resource, mental health ( 83) and social support ( 54) most frequently. Psychometric properties were often reported for mental health measures, but less commonly for other constructs. Few studies reported adapting measures for specific contexts. Existing measures for mental health, equitable gender attitudes, safety and security and time sufficiency were commonly used; other constructs lacked standardised measures.

CONCLUSIONS

Measurement of caregiver resources during the complementary feeding period is limited. Measuring caregiver resources is essential for prioritising caregivers and understanding how resources influence child care, feeding and nutrition.