Assessment of quality of home environment and psychosocial development of preschoolers of gujjar tribe

Environment provided by the parents, parental behaviour, their interaction with the child and other related factors such as socio personal and economic factors tend to influence the development of children. Many psychologists believe that three to six years in the life of an individual is the most important period of development especially for psychosocial wellbeing. The psychosocial and environmental variables are uniquely related to the development of young children (Jose, 1997). The present study was conducted to analyse the home environment available to tribal preschoolers as well as to assess their psychosocial development. The total sample for the study comprised of 100 preschooler-mother dyads selected from settled Gujjar families from District Udhampur. A modified version of Mohite’s Home Environment Inventory and five major areas of psychosocial development, namely: Gross Motor; Vision and Fine Motor; Hearing, Language and Concept Development; Personal Skills and Social Skills of the preschoolers were assessed by using ICMR Developmental Screening Test. On spot observations were also carried out to validate the results. The findings of the study reveal that overall majority (88%) of the sample children received ‘moderate’ home environment as well as most children (58%) had achieved all the developmental milestones ‘in time’. It was observed that in most of the cases the living rooms of sample Gujjars were not overcrowded with furniture, there were few toys available and even some play material available in the house. Mostly the neighbourhood was aesthetically pleasing, and infrastructure and play environment appeared to be safe. In case of psychosocial development, overall most (58%) of the sample children achieved all the developmental milestones ‘in time’. This trend continued for both male (56%) as well as female (60%) children separately. However, 30 cases of delayed developmental milestones were noted followed by 12 sample children having ‘very delayed’ developmental milestones. Statistically, there was no significant difference in the level of home environment available as well as in the level of psychosocial development between male and female sample preschoolers. Statistically, the various aspects of psychosocial development were significantly correlated among each other; but the home environment was not significantly correlated with psychosocial development.