Building Parental Capacity to Improve Child Development: Impact Evaluation of an Early Childhood Stimulation Program in Bangladesh
Author: Chinen, Marjorie
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Capacity Building,Child Development,Parents,Outcome Measures,Cognitive Development,Language Acquisition,Infants,Toddlers,Program Effectiveness,Mothers,Parent Child Relationship,Cost Effectiveness,Intervention,Randomized Controlled Trials,Surveys

Globally, at least 200 million children younger than five years old are falling short of their potential for development and growth. There is some evidence that improvements to children's health, nutrition, and development outcomes can be made through programs that provide direct learning experiences to children and families; are targeted toward younger and disadvantaged children; are of longer duration; and are integrated with family support, health, nutrition, or educational systems and services. Yet there are serious gaps in knowledge about how to deliver integrated early childhood interventions in cost-effective ways in low-income settings--that particularly focuses on improving growth and child development in the first thousand days of a child's life. This study presents the baseline results for an impact evaluation of one such intervention in Bangladesh. The purpose of this impact evaluation is to examine whether and how the Early Childhood Stimulation Program (ECSP) implemented by Save the Children improves the cognitive and language development and anthropometric outcomes of children between 3 and 42 months of age. The Save the Children early childhood stimulation intervention builds on the NNS platform, which already reaches out to frontline service providers. The NNS program trains service providers to deliver a comprehensive nutrition package to households with young children, and Save the Children complements this by providing additional training modules on early stimulation and responsive care. There are five research questions that guide the evaluation: (1) What is the impact of the early childhood stimulation program (delivered with the NNS) on children's cognitive development outcomes?; (2) What is the impact of the early childhood stimulation program (delivered with the NNS) on children's anthropometric outcomes?; (3) What is the impact of the early childhood stimulation program on mothers' parenting behaviors?; (4) What is the benefit of the intervention relative to the cost?; and (5) What is the mechanism through which the intervention affects the outcomes of interest? This evaluation is a cluster-randomized control trial (RCT), in which community clinics within the same union (or administrative unit) are randomly assigned to either receive the intervention or not receive the intervention. Data collection took place face to face in the field, using highly scripted surveys. The team completed the baseline data collection and the baseline report in January 2014. The baseline results validate the study design used in the impact evaluation. The randomization process appears to have worked successfully in terms of creating equivalent groups at baseline because the mean characteristics of the groups were balanced between the treatment and control conditions. The study is ongoing.