An Early Childhood Internet-based and Family-based Intervention Study

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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The poverty rate among children under 18 years old in Hong Kong in 2015 was 18% after social welfare intervention. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize winner in Economics, advocates early childhood investment to enhance social mobility, given its lifelong impact of on child development. However, few randomized control trails have been used to examine the effectiveness of early childhood intervention in promoting social mobility through child development in Hong Kong. To fill these gaps, we propose an interdisciplinary intervention study involving academics from economics, sociology, social work, gerontology, education, and psychology to investigate methods to promote the social mobility of children living in poverty through early intervention. The overall objective is to enhance the developmental outcomes of children in poverty by utilizing parental resources within a family system, technological resources available in modern metropolis and the human resources enjoyed by the elderly in Hong Kong. The primary objective is to evaluate an internet- and family-based intervention to promote the development of children in poverty aged 24 months to three years. The examined outcome will be the developmental well-being of participating children, with the long-term goal of promoting their social mobility to break the cycle of poverty. In the long run, we aim to establish the proposed intervention in policy to promote the development of disadvantaged children. The secondary objective is to identify intergenerational volunteerism as a means for productive aging through a mentoring program using older adults as mentors to participating parents.

Detailed Description
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The proposed research consists of three phases. The first phase will be a cross-sectional survey with a sample of 1,000 cases from 60 nurseries cum kindergartens to explore the family demographics and developmental profiles of low-income children in comparison to others. The second phase will be a randomized control trail implementing a 24-month internet-based intervention with 200 toddler-parents dyads from 20 to 30 of the original 60 nurseries. Interventions will be delivered by older mentors professionally trained by the research team. All children, parents and elderly mentors will be evaluated through a set of outcome measurements to assess the effectiveness of the program. The last phase will involve the dissemination of research information that may become building blocks for policies on internet-based early childhood education, poverty alleviation and social mobility enhancement, as well as productive aging.

Official Title
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A Large Scale Cross-sectional Survey and a Randomized Control Study on the Effectiveness of an Early Childhood Family-Based and Internet-Based Intervention

Conditions
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Early Childhood Development

Intervention / Treatment
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* Other: Online curriculum


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Parents who have children aged 24 months to 3 years Exclusion Criteria: Parents who have children beyond the above age range
Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Interventional Model Description: Large-scale survey: Using the stratified sampling method, a randomized list of 60 samples was selected from the official list of 506 kindergartens-cum-child care center provided by the Bureau of Education. Out of the 60 schools, a total of 40 schools from 12 NGOs agreed to join the survey. As of April 2019, we have received 700 responses for the survey. Intervention Study: There are two phases of intervention in this stage. The total sample size for both phases is 200 parent-child dyads. For both phases, the team applied stratified randomization method for randomization. Participants were assigned to either treatment group or wait-list control group on a school basis.
Masking: Single


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: Treatment group<br>Online curriculum has been delivered to this group of participants on an Internet-based platform | Other: Online curriculum<br>* The psychologist and our advisory team had successfully developed a total of 100 hours of parenting curriculum. The adopted curriculum had focused on using play to facilitate parents in promoting their children's development in cognitive, motor, emotional and social aspects. Play-based activities are instrumental in improving children's development. Given that parents in poverty had difficulties spending time and money travelling back-and-forth to the training site and their homes, the research team decided to use e-learning as the medium of learning for our parenting programme. Web-based learning has the advantage of cutting time and travelling costs, which are luxuries to many parents in poverty.<br>|
| No Intervention: Wait-list control group<br>Participants in wait-list control group would not have access to the online curriculum until the intervention process for treatment group is finished. | |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-III (Bayley III) | It is a comprehensive tool to identify development issues during early childhood. | Change from baseline assessment at 10 months | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ) and ASQ: SE | It is a parent-report developmental screening tool. It covers the following aspects: Cognitive、Receptive Communication、Expressive Communication、Fine Motor、Gross Motor、Social-Emotion、Adaptive Behavior | Change from baseline assessment at 10 months | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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Social mobility & poverty, Internet & family-based, Early childhood intervetion, Intergenerational, Productive aging