Clinical trial NCT03680001: Students Education Training in Emotional Connection
Official title: Students Education Training in Emotional Connection
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Child Development
Premature Birth
Keywords: emotional connection
Martha G. Welch
nursing education
Lead sponsor: Columbia University
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2018-09-21
Enrollment: 54
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 20
Maximum age (years): 40
Standard ages: ADULT
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: CROSS_SECTIONAL
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Graduate students from the Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus and from the Columbia School of Social Work

Brief summary: The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of different educational modules in training graduate students from Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus and from the Columbia School of Social Work to assess the emotional connection of mother/child dyads with accuracy.

The investigators hypothesize that after completing the educational module involving recorded dyad interactions, subjects will achieve coding reliability with the PI.

Detailed description: The purpose of this study is to develop and test educational modules designed to instruct students how to assess the quality and strength of mother-child relationships. The approach will use constructs of Emotional Connection that were used in development of an investigational observation-based screening instrument, the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS). The WECS allows healthcare providers to rate the emotional connection of a mother-child relationship in just a few minutes of observed face-to face interaction, and shows preliminary predictive properties when performed in the first year of life.

Administration of the WECS involves watching recorded interactions of a child sitting face-to-face on the mother's lap, and scoring the interaction on sliding scales per 4 domains. During the WECS development, the Nurture Science Program of Columbia University Irving Medical Center created and coded hours of parent-child interaction videos. These videos will be used to assess and train the students (subjects) on rating mother/child dyads around emotional connection. Subjects will rate the quality of mother-child relationships in video training sets after completing one of two educational modules: A) a lecture-style webinar describing evidence base and instructions on how to score the WECS B) a guide written in Clear Explicit Translatable Language (CETL). Training set results of students in these groups will be compared to results of students who received no prior training. Training set results will be analyzed for the reliability statistic between student scores and key scores established by writer of the scale and PI. Subjects will then spend 3 months without further training in emotional connection or practice coding WECS. Subjects will then rate the quality of mother-child relationships for videos of dyads they hadn't previously seen. The main outcome of this study is the comparison of reliability statistics and maintenance between students who completed different educational modules.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* graduate students from the Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus and from the Columbia School of Social Work

Exclusion Criteria:

* refusal to participate

Primary outcomes:
measure: Intra-Class Correlations of Students' Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) Scores
timeFrame: 2018 - 2019
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: New York
country: United States
facility: Columbia University Medical Center
state: New York
Study officials:
affiliation: Columbia University
name: Martha G Welch, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Welch MG, Firestein MR, Austin J, Hane AA, Stark RI, Hofer MA, Garland M, Glickstein SB, Brunelli SA, Ludwig RJ, Myers MM. Family Nurture Intervention in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit improves social-relatedness, attention, and neurodevelopment of preterm infants at 18 months in a randomized controlled trial. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2015 Nov;56(11):1202-11. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12405. Epub 2015 Mar 11.
citation: Hane AA, LaCoursiere JN, Mitsuyama M, Wieman S, Ludwig RJ, Kwon KY, V Browne J, Austin J, M Myers M, Welch MG. The Welch Emotional Connection Screen: validation of a brief mother-infant relational health screen. Acta Paediatr. 2019 Apr;108(4):615-625. doi: 10.1111/apa.14483. Epub 2018 Aug 13.