Promoting non-violent parenting through a virtual parenting program in Jamaica

The intervention involves training parents of children aged 2 to 6 years in child behavior management strategies and child-led play using a virtual adaptation of the Irie Homes Toolbox.

The intervention includes content relating to four key concepts: 1) building positive relationships between parent and child (e.g. praise, child-led play, involving the child in everyday activities), 2) preventing misbehavior (e.g. understanding why children misbehave, giving children independence, and autonomy, giving clear instructions, setting rules and expectations, modeling appropriate behavior), 3) managing misbehavior (e.g. redirecting children, withdrawing attention, setting limits, giving appropriate consequences) and 4) emotional self-regulation and stress reduction techniques.

The intervention is delivered over a 10-week period through three main components:
1) Three SMS messages per week relating to content from the Irie Homes Toolbox
2) Access to an App consisting of videos of parents utilizing the strategies with their children with new content uploaded each week for 10 weeks
3) Weekly 1-hour virtual group parenting sessions in small groups of eight parents with an officer from the Early Childhood Commission, Jamaica.

The control group receive three SMS messages per week with content relating Covid-19.

2021-09-20

2021-11-26

Attitudes to violence
Parents’ use of violence against their child

- Attitudes to violence: five agree/disagree questions.
- Parents’ use of violence against their child: number of days in the past week that the parent used violence against their child across five discipline questions (from UNICEF MICS).

Caregiver well-being
Child behavior difficulties
Mechanisms: Caregiver knowledge, support networks, self-efficacy

- Caregiver well-being: depression (from PHQ-2), sleep, and anxiety (from GAD-2); each question answered on a 0-3 scale.
- Child behavior difficulties: ten questions on strengths and difficulties (five on emotional subscale and five on conduct); each question answered on a 0-2 scale.

Sampling:
There were two eligibility criteria for recruitment of caregivers into the study: (1) the individual should be the father, mother, or main caregiver of a child between 2-6 years of age (inclusive), and (2) the individual should have access to a smartphone or tablet that allows him/her to connect to the internet.

Caregivers were recruited via three channels: (1) SMS messages to the universe of mobile subscribers of Digicel Jamaica (more than 2.6 million SMS messages were sent across all Jamaican parishes), (2) emails sent to principals of preschools by the Early Childhood Commission for dissemination to parents, and (3) social media banners on the Jamaican Loop News website. Each mode of recruitment had a unique link to the recruitment eligibility checklist survey.

Randomization:

1,113 recruited caregivers successfully completed the baseline survey. We randomized the caregivers into two experimental arms: treatment and control. This gave a final study sample of 557 caregivers in the treatment group and 556 caregivers in the control group.

Randomization was stratified by four strata – the cross between the gender of the caregiver ((1) male or (2) female) and the mode of recruitment into the study ((1) SMS campaign or (2) Early Childhood Commission and Principal referral or social media campaign). Few caregivers were recruited through the principal and social media channels, and so we pooled these two modes in the stratification exercise. Stratified randomization by gender will allow us to study heterogeneity in intervention impacts by the gender of the caregiver. Details on the intervention that the treatment group receives are provided in the intervention section. Caregivers in the control group receive three SMS messages per week with content relating Covid-19.

Sampling:
There were two eligibility criteria for recruitment of caregivers into the study: (1) the individual should be the father, mother, or main caregiver of a child between 2-6 years of age (inclusive), and (2) the individual should have access to a smartphone or tablet that allows him/her to connect to the internet.

Caregivers were recruited via three channels: (1) SMS messages to the universe of mobile subscribers of Digicel Jamaica (more than 2.6 million SMS messages were sent across all Jamaican parishes), (2) emails sent to principals of preschools by the Early Childhood Commission for dissemination to parents, and (3) social media banners on the Jamaican Loop News website. Each mode of recruitment had a unique link to the recruitment eligibility checklist survey.

Randomization:

1,113 recruited caregivers successfully completed the baseline survey. We randomized the caregivers into two experimental arms: treatment and control. This gave a final study sample of 557 caregivers in the treatment group and 556 caregivers in the control group.

Randomization was stratified by four strata – the cross between the gender of the caregiver ((1) male or (2) female) and the mode of recruitment into the study ((1) SMS campaign or (2) Early Childhood Commission and Principal referral or social media campaign). Few caregivers were recruited through the principal and social media channels, and so we pooled these two modes in the stratification exercise. Stratified randomization by gender will allow us to study heterogeneity in intervention impacts by the gender of the caregiver. Details on the intervention that the treatment group receives are provided in the intervention section. Caregivers in the control group receive three SMS messages per week with content relating Covid-19.

Randomization was done in Stata using the randtreat command. Randomization was stratified by four strata – the cross between the gender of the caregiver ((1) male or (2) female) and the mode of recruitment into the study ((1) SMS campaign or (2) Principal referral or social media campaign).

Caregiver-level randomization

No

1,113 caregivers

1,113 caregivers

557 caregivers in the treatment group and 556 caregivers in the control group.

MDE = 0.18 (18 percentage points) assuming alpha = 0.05, power = 80%, correlation between baseline and endline (ANCOVA model) = 0.25, attrition between baseline and endline = 20%.