Qualitative Research on Infant and Child Development in Majority World Countries

Publication bias has become increasingly acknowledged in the field of child development (Draper et al. 2022). The lack of diversity in child development research has been highlighted (Moriguchi 2022; Nielsen et al. 2017), including for specific fields such as cognitive development research (Alves et al. 2022; Miller-Cotto et al. 2022; Rowley and Camacho 2015), caregiving (Benito-Gomez et al. 2020; Raval and Walker 2019), physical punishment and child development (Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor 2016; Heilmann et al. 2021) and early childhood development interventions (Draper et al. 2023; Ferreira et al. 2020). Furthermore, recent reviews have noted biases in infant development research (Singh et al. 2023).

While criticisms initially highlighted the narrow focus of psychology on American (Arnett 2008) and ‘WEIRD’ (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic) populations, drawing attention to the lack of representation in our understanding of human psychology and behaviour (Henrich et al. 2010a, 2010b). More recently, the terms ‘Majority’ and ‘Minority World’ (Alam 2019) are used rather than terms such as WEIRD, Global South, developing or low- and middle-income countries to not bolster notions of superiority and false hierarchies (Khan et al. 2022). Instead, Majority World refers collectively to the countries that make up the majority of the world's population, while Western Countries actually comprise the minority (Khan et al. 2022).

Apart from the publication bias already mentioned, qualitative research in child development is scarce, relative to quantitative research. There are two main factors that arguably contribute to this. First, this relative scarcity may be due to long-held beliefs by some child development researchers from quantitative research backgrounds that qualitative research does not measure up to the same rigorous standards as quantitative research—a view not unique to child development research. Frameworks for evaluating the rigour of qualitative research can run the risk of applying a quantitative paradigm, and reviewers more entrenched in this quantitative paradigm can ask (and sometimes insist) that qualitative researchers apply quantitative concepts such as inter-rater reliability and generalizability, and consider small sample sizes a limitation. This can show a lack of insight into the underpinning tenets of qualitative research, thereby failing to properly recognise its unique contributions.

Second, many journals in the field of child development do not easily accommodate qualitative research articles. These journals have word limits that are unrealistic for qualitative research articles and would require authors to severely compromise on their ability to highlight the nuances and richness of qualitative data and their interpretation, thereby downplaying the significance of this type of research. The potential impact of this is that qualitative research in child development gets submitted to journals in adjacent fields, such as public and global health. This means that the target audience of child development researchers tend not to see this work published in the journals they follow and lose out on the opportunity to see its importance for the field. Infant and Child Development is one of the few journals in the field that makes accommodation in their word limits for qualitative research (unrestricted for methods and results sections), and more journals should follow their example.

Apart from addressing these factors, it needs to be emphasised that qualitative research can make a valuable contribution to addressing the need for greater contextual awareness, especially across diverse global settings (Draper et al. 2022). Quantitative data is essential to characterise various contextual factors, such as socioeconomic status, household composition, presence or absence of resources in the home and community and the quality of learning environments. Qualitative data can be highly complementary to these data, by investigating in more detail and depth how these factors interact and intersect, particularly when they do not necessarily operate in the same way across diverse global settings. Furthermore, qualitative research can explore the complexities of the perceptions, lived experiences, attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and motivations of children and adolescents, as well as actors within the home, school and community environments.

From an implementation science perspective, qualitative research can play an integral role in community participatory methods for the co-creation of child development interventions, especially to ensure the contextual relevance of such interventions. Qualitative research is extremely useful for answering questions relating to implementation, such as feasibility and acceptability of interventions, and developing a better understanding of how child development interventions work, and why they work better for some people or settings than others. All these insights can feed into meaningful strategies for the translation of research findings into policy and practice, and for guiding future research.

This special issue therefore aims to address not only the bias against publications from Majority World countries, but also the dearth of published qualitative research from these countries in the field of child development. While publishing special issues featuring this type of research is not the full solution to address these issues, it is an important step in the right direction. By platforming qualitative research in child development from around the world, and by highlighting the challenges faced in publishing this research, we hope to encourage a greater openness to publishing this work, and to acknowledging its value for the field of child development.