# Attrition in a large‐scale habituation task administered at home

## TL;DR

This study examines how socioeconomic factors affect participation and completion rates in a home-based habituation task for 7-month-old infants.

## Contribution

The study provides new insights into how socioeconomic background influences attrition in infant behavioral research conducted at home.

## Key findings

- Maternal education, parental occupation, and household income are positively related to participation and task completion.
- Household language (German vs. other) also significantly affects participation rates.
- Lower socioeconomic backgrounds face multiple barriers to participation in infant behavioral studies.

## Abstract

Infant research often struggles with selective samples, especially when focusing on behavioural measures, such as those drawn from habituation tasks. However, selectivity may threaten the generalizability and interpretation of results, which is why the current study investigates attrition in a habituation task administered in a household setting in 7‐month‐old infants. We used a large‐scale German dataset, focusing on the children's socioeconomic background, and investigated two aspects of attrition, namely, participation and task completion. The findings suggest significant effects of the children's socioeconomic background on attrition: Maternal education, parental occupation, household income and household language (German vs. other) were positively related to participation and task completion. The analyses indicate that multiple barriers may prevent parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds from letting their children participate. The study concludes with a critical discussion of possible mechanisms of selectivity in behavioural measures as well as the household setting, in which the data were collected.