Importance of IMAPI for stakeholders

The present moment is favorable for discussions about Early Childhood, and the IMAPI can be a very useful tool in this context. It gathers information from different indicators in an integrated, simple, reliable, and accessible way, helping you, the stakeholder, to obtain a broad and comparative overview of how your municipality is performing in terms of providing a suitable environment for Early Childhood.

The indicators that compose the IMAPI were selected based on three criteria: 1) the indicator should reflect one of the five domains of the Nurturing Care Framework; 2) the indicator should belong to an existing database; and 3) the indicator should be available disaggregated at the municipal level. Based on these pre-established criteria, a process of identification and selection of indicators was conducted to build the IMAPI, with technical and specialists in Early Childhood and public policies panels. The methodology employed to construct the IMAPI can be consulted in detail in the Operational Manual (available in portuguese).

The initial proposal of the IMAPI was to unify indicators that already exist in Brazilian databases. Some indicators, although important, could not be included because they are not available at the required level of disaggregation (municipal). Consult our Operational Manual (available in portuguese) to discover all the indicators that were considered for inclusion during the process of constructing the IMAPI.

The initial proposal of the IMAPI was to unify indicators that already exist in Brazilian databases. Most of the databases used for the construction of the IMAPI are in the public domain and can be obtained via the internet or by request from the appropriate competent institutions. The bases used can be consulted in item 4.1.3 of the Operational Manual (available in portuguese).

We used only the data available in the selected databases to construct the IMAPI. Absence of data means inconsistency in the databases. In this case, the municipality should identify the flaws in the information process and correct them to make its data more reliable. When the municipalities did not have data for any of the indicators, we used data imputation. However, in the presentation of the indicator we noted that the data was non-existent for that municipality. The data imputation methodology is detailed in item 4.2.2. of the Operational Manual (available in portuguese).

The databases used to construct IMAPI are described in the data source of each indicator. We acknowledge that divergences between municipal data and our source of information might happen. In this case, the municipality should identify the flaws in the information process and correct them to make its data more reliable. The databases used can be consulted in item 4.1.3 of the Operational Manual (available in portuguese).

Soon you will be able to access the database by filling out a request on our website.

The IMAPI was built through a systematic scientific process led by data scientists and epidemiologists, early childhood and public policy specialists. The construction process for the IMAPI is detailed in the Operational Manual (available in portuguese).

The general IMAPI or by domains in your municipality can be compared with any other Brazilian municipality. However, during this comparison, it is important to take into account the different characteristics of the municipalities. If your municipality is small, for example, it may be interesting to compare it to other municipalities with similar population size, or to other municipalities in your State or Region. Access the Ranking and choose the criteria you want to use to compare your municipality with other Brazilian municipalities.

The IMAPI was built for the year 2016 because this was the last year that the projected population of children under 5 was available in Brazil, which is the denominator used to calculate various indicators. Despite this limitation, the IMAPI provides a photograph of the general scenario of the municipality, generating fundamental information for stakeholder to understand the performance of their municipality in offering a suitable environment for Early Childhood.

In order to classify the municipalities in the ranking, general IMAPI and IMAPI by domain scores were used with decimal places. To facilitate the interpretation of these scores, we chose to present rounded IMAPI values ​​on the website, without decimal places.

Only domains with two or more indicators were included in the calculation of the general IMAPI. Thus, the Responsive Caregiving domain, as it has only one indicator - Visits by national home-visiting parenting skills program - was not included in the calculation of the general IMAPI. We are working with governmental and non-governmental organizations to enable the availability of more indicators in this domain so that it can be considered in the next general IMAPI estimates.