Effect of A Parental Stimulation Intervention on Early Childhood Development among Migrant Population in China: A Stepped-Wedge Randomized Trial

Last registered on September 26, 2024

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0014371

Initial registration date

September 22, 2024

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

September 26, 2024, 12:29 PM EDT

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

Locations

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Primary Investigator

Name

Qi Jiang

Affiliation

UC Berkeley

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Yiwei Qian

PI Affiliation

Southwestern University of Finance and Economics 

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2024-07-01

End date

2025-05-01

Keywords

Behavior, Education, Firms & Productivity, Welfare

Additional Keywords

Early childhood development, Human capital, Migrant community

JEL code(s)

J13; J24; O15

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

This study aims to assess the impact of a parental stimulation intervention on early childhood development (ECD) and parenting environments among migrant populations in China. The intervention addresses a critical gap, as up to 43% of children under five in low- and middle-income countries, including migrant children in China, are at risk of developmental delays due to factors such as low socioeconomic status and limited access to public services. Using a stepped-wedge trial design, 300 caregiver-child dyads (children aged 6-30 months) living in Foxconn's campus in Zhengzhou will participate. The intervention consists of weekly one-on-one parental training sessions, adapted from the Reach Up and Learn curriculum. Outcomes, including child development and parental investment, will be measured at baseline and at 2-month intervals. The primary hypotheses are that the intervention will improve children’s cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional development, enhance parenting skills and investments, and positively affect employee well-being, job satisfaction, and retention. With 80% power to detect a 0.25 standard deviation improvement in cognitive scores, this study has the potential to provide key insights into scalable interventions for vulnerable migrant populations.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Jiang, Qi and Yiwei Qian. 2024. "Effect of A Parental Stimulation Intervention on Early Childhood Development among Migrant Population in China: A Stepped-Wedge Randomized Trial." AEA RCT Registry. September 26. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14371-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The treatment is weekly one-on-one parenting training sessions delivered by trained facilitators. The training sessions used a scripted curriculum that was loosely adapted from Reach Up and Learn (Walker et al., 2005). The curriculum was designed to be stage-based and age-appropriate, and each session contained modules focusing on two of the following four developmental domains: cognition, language, motor, and social-emotional development.

The standard of care is the access to the parenting centers, which contained a large play area, providing age-appropriate toys and baby books for rural families, to encourage free play. There are also group activities scheduled everyday to facilitate engagement in the parenting center. Both treatment and control group receive standard of care.

Intervention Start Date

2024-09-25

Intervention End Date

2025-03-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Child cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional development scores measured by Ages & Stages Questionnaires, Third Edition (ASQ-3), Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social Emotional (ASQ:SE), Devereux Early Childhood Assessment for Infants Record Form, and Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development: Third Edition (Bayley-III).
Productivity of migrant workers;
Satisfaction of the migrant workers towards the firm;

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Child development will be measured using ASQ-3, Bayley-3, DECA, and (or) ASQ: SE scales at home or the parenting center；
Satisfaction measurement towards the firm will be administered through online surveys;
The productivity measurement of migrant workers will be extracted from the administrative data from the HR department of the firm.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

(1) Child screen-use time measured by self-made items; (2) parenting investment and skills measured by Family Care Indicators (FCI); (3) parental expectation and parenting information sources measured by self-made items; (4) parenting interaction quality measured by XXX; (5) parenting self-efficacy measured by Brief Parental Self Efficacy Scale (BPSES); (6) Parenting stress measured by Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF); (7) Depressive symptoms of the primary caretakers measured by Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression Scale (CES-D) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ).

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Parenting behaviors consisits parental time investment and parenting material investment, measured the Family Care Indicators (FCI) scale;
Parental self-efficacy will be measured by Brief Parental Self Efficacy Scale (BPSES).

Experimental Design

The study will employ a stepped-wedge trial design, where the intervention will be rolled out to different groups at different time points randomly. The study sample is comprised of 300 caretaker-child dyads with children aged 6-30 months living on the campus of Foxconn – the world’s largest Apple production supplier in Zhengzhou China. The trial will be conducted over a total duration of 8 months, divided into four 2-month time windows. The first two months are free of intervention. Eligible caretaker-child dyads will be randomly assigned to one of the three groups, and each group will start to receive the intervention in different time windows from months 3 to 8, randomly and respectively. The intervention is comprised of weekly one-on-one parental training sessions for caretakers (mothers or grandmothers typically) and their children on interactive parenting practices, with a curriculum loosely adapted from Reach Up and Learn. The standard of care is the access to the parenting center, which contained a large play area, providing age-appropriate toys and baby books for rural families, to encourage free play. There are also group activities scheduled everyday to facilitate engagement in the parenting center. Both treatment and control group receive standard of care.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Randomization will be done in office by a computer

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

Sample size: planned number of observations

300 child-caregiver dyads

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

100 child-caregiver dyads will be randomly assigned to the first cohort, receiving one-on-one parenting intervention from the beginning of the intervention; 100 child-caregiver dyads will assigned to the second cohort, receiving one-on-one parenting intervention two months later than the first cohort; 100 child-caregiver dyads will randomly assigned to the second cohort, receiving one-on-one parenting intervention four months later than the first cohort.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

With the following parameters, Mean difference: 0.25 Standard deviation: 1 Significance level: 0.05 Normal-distribution (if false then t-distribution): True Number clusters per sequence: 1 Number of sequences: 3 WP-ICC: 0.02; WP-ICC (lower): 0.01; WP-ICC (upper): 0.05; CAC: 0.8; Individual auto-correlation: 0.8 We reach a power of 85% with the base ICC and base CAC. The calculation was done at the Shiny CRT Calculator (https://clusterrcts.shinyapps.io/rshinyapp/).

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

China Center for Behavioral Economics and Finance, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics

IRB Approval Date

2023-12-11

IRB Approval Number

N/A

Analysis Plan