Baby Talk? The effects of a language acquisition intervention in nurseries on staff' practices and on children development

Last registered on June 04, 2019

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0002073

Initial registration date

February 05, 2018

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

February 05, 2018, 1:39 PM EST

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

Last updated

June 04, 2019, 7:44 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

France

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Marc Gurgand

Affiliation

Paris School of Economics

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Sophie Kern

PI Affiliation

CNRS-Lyon University

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Quentin Daviot

PI Affiliation

J-PAL Europe

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Clément de Chaisemartin

PI Affiliation

University of Santa Barbara

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2016-01-01

End date

2021-06-30

Keywords

Education

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

Language acquisition is key to success in school as it impacts future acquisitions like writting skills, vocabulary size and quality as well as cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions. It is admitted that early childhood (up to five years old) is the most important period for the development of a child. This development is impacted by various factors like the socio-economic environment a child grows in : accordingly, first inequalities are transmitted to children especially through language acquisition. As an example, Hart and Risley (1995) show that, at the age of three, a child from a blue-collar family heard on average thirty million words less than a child from a white-collar family, creating important inequalities that school has difficulties to reduce as surveys like PISA can show in France. Investing in language development programs in preschools is proven to have large positive effects on several short and long terms outcomes (Carolina Abecedarian, Perry Preschool Project) as well as being cost-effective. Parler Bambin is a french program that focuses on language development in nurseries for child from zero to three years old. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of Parler Bambin on children and families outcomes as well as on the behaviors of the nurseries' workers.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Daviot, Quentin et al. 2019. "Baby Talk? The effects of a language acquisition intervention in nurseries on staff' practices and on children development." AEA RCT Registry. June 04. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2073-3.0

Former Citation

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Parler Bambin is a program with three dimensions: i) Talking to children in a daily basis. In a collective nursery, it is important that each child receives attention and has several conversations over the day. Parler Bambin trains professionals on how to ensure qualitative conversations with all children and everyday. ii) Parental involvment in their child's language is an important part of their development since much of the inequalities in language arise from the family cell. Nursery workers talk to the parents about how they can enhance language acquisition. iii) Small group sessions are organized for children facing the most important difficulties in their language acquisition. Three times a week, a group of three children have a 15 minutes session with a nursery worker and read image-books in order to enhance their language development.

Nursery workers follow five training sessions within six months, each session focusing on a specific subset of the program. Trainers are composed of i) language specialists and ii) nursery workers specialized in this program. The trainers come to the nursery to train the workers but they also provide phone follow-up after this period.

Intervention Start Date

2016-01-01

Intervention End Date

2020-12-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Children: cognitive and non-cognitive skills; language development, based on parental and preschool workers' questionnaires + direct observations by psychologists using validated instruments.
Parental involvment (language at home, relation with the preschool), based on parental questionaire
Nursery worker practices (language, relation with the parents), based on questionnaires and audio recording

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Voluntary preshools are randomized into a phase-in design, being progressively included in the treatement over 4 years. Randomization is run within strata based on municipalities and preschools initial characteristics.

A sample of children is selected within nurseries, targeting low social background, and followed in time for a maximum of 3 years.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization by a computer

Randomization Unit

Nurseries

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

94 nurseries

Sample size: planned number of observations

1,000 children (and families) 1,200 nursery workers

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

As we are implementing a phase-in design, sample size by treament arms varies over time
Overall :
41 nurseries receive training in year T
9 in year T+1
8 in year T+2
36 in year T+3

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

MDE for a one-year impact of the program is around 25% of a SD MDE for a three-year impact of the program is around 50% of a SD

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB