A randomized controlled trial of a parenting program in public childcare centers (CAIF) in Uruguay focusing on increase father's involvement

Last registered on July 10, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
A randomized controlled trial of a parenting program in public childcare centers (CAIF) in Uruguay focusing on increase father's involvement
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0011689
Initial registration date
July 05, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
July 10, 2023, 9:42 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
IDB

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
IDB
PI Affiliation
IDB
PI Affiliation
IDB

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2023-06-26
End date
2024-01-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
In this project we will evaluate a parenting program, "Parentalidades Comprometidas" (PPC), aimed at families with children between the ages of 0 and 3 attending early childhood centers in Uruguay.

The evaluation of the program will generate evidence on the characteristics of the implementation of parenting programs in Uruguay, and will shed new light on which components of the program work and which do not. The evaluation will allow us to analyze whether or not PPC is achieving its intended objectives.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Bagolle, Alexandre et al. 2023. "A randomized controlled trial of a parenting program in public childcare centers (CAIF) in Uruguay focusing on increase father's involvement." AEA RCT Registry. July 10. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11689-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
PPC seeks to improve parenting practices from a perspective of rights, gender equality and co-responsibility between families and the State. The intervention comprises 8 group workshops for caregivers and an initial encounter. These workshops are organized into 5 main thematic areas: Co-responsibility for care (2 workshops), Developmental and educational needs of children (1 workshop), Parental skills with a focus on good treatment (3 workshops), Emotional skills (2 workshops) and Self-care and networks (1 workshop).
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2023-06-26
Intervention End Date
2023-09-05

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1) Parenting positive practices and knowledge: Parenting Sense of Competence (PSOC) (Johnston & Mash, 1989) or TOPSE (TOPSE – A Tool to Measure Parenting Self Efficacy); and Family Care Indicators (FCI) module on MICS UNICEF.

2) Fathers’ involvement in care and domestic activities/gender role beliefs: Attitudes Toward Family Roles Scale (ATFRS; Hoffman y Kloska, 1995), and an ad-hoc index to measured support networks, care overload and co-parenting based in ENDIS and other scales.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
1) Punitive discipline practices : the discipline Module on MICS UNICEF.
2) Caregivers´ wellbeing: WHO Wellbeing Index (Campo-Arias et al., 2015)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We will evaluate the intervention using a phased-in clustered Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). Randomization will take place at the center and family level. For the first stage of randomization, we stratified by center size and previous exposure to other editions of the program. In total, 100 centers will be offering the program. Of those, 50 will be randomly assigned to the early treatment group (between June and August this year) and the rest to control (late treatment, from October 2023 on), with data for this impact evaluation being collected before the late treatment.

The trial has been submitted to the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Psychology of the Universidad de la República (UDELAR) of Uruguay in early June 2023 (with assessment file 191175-000080-23). Comments and a formal response is expected by the end of July 2023.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
First level: early childhood centers
Second level: family
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
100 early childhood centers
Sample size: planned number of observations
1500 families
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
50 treatment (early implementation of PPC)
50 control (late implementarion of PPC)
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
MDE: 0.152 Outcome (PSOC) mean under control: 4.1 Outcome variance: 0.5 Number of clusters: 100 (50% assigned to treatment) Units per cluster: 15
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials