Development of an Educational Model in Stimulating the Growth and Development of Children Aged 2-5 Years: Dick and Carey s Intervention Design

Aims: Early identification of a young child with developmental delays or deficits is recognized as an essential part of good healthcare for children in regular pediatric practice. This study aimed to design and develop an educational model to guide mothers of toddlers to increase their knowledge and skills about assessing growth, development, and stimulation of child development. Materials Methods: This research is a quasi-experimental study using a two-group pretest-posttest design, which was carried out at the Aurdauri Public Health Center, Jambi City, Jambi Province, Indonesia, in May – November 2022. The subjects were 31 mothers of children aged 2–5 years old who were randomly selected with the criteria of being able to use Android properly and distributed into small groups (n=15) and large groups (n=16). The small group used the application with assistance and the large group without assistance. Data were analyzed using the paired t-test. Findings: 82% of the mothers could not distinguish between growth and development, 82% knew about growth stimulation, 91% wanted to know about growth and development stimulation, and 90% preferred audiovisual information. The development of learning materials to stimulate the growth and development of 2–5 years children led to educational applications, and the use of android applications increased mothers’ knowledge about stimulating child growth and development (p=0.001). Conclusion: The application implementation shows a significant increase in the knowledge of mothers with children aged 2–5 years.