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 and how to keep their child safe.

2021-09-20

2021-11-26

Parents’ use of violence against their child
Parental support

For each primary outcome, we will study both extensive and intensive margins.
- 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). We will also use a list experiment to estimate the prevalence of use of violence and compare the difference between treatment and control groups.
- Parental support: number of days in the past week that the parent carried out five activities with their child (from UNICEF MICS).

Caregiver well-being
Child behavior difficulties
Attitudes to violence

For each secondary outcome, we will study both extensive and intensive margins.
- 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.
- Attitudes to violence: five agree/disagree questions.

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:

1,117 recruited caregivers successfully completed the baseline survey. We randomized the caregivers into two experimental arms: treatment and control. One caregiver in the treatment group was dropped post-randomization as she was later identified as an officer from the Early Childhood Commission, Jamaica. This gave a final study sample of 557 caregivers in the treatment group and 559 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 and how to keep their child safe.

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:

1,117 recruited caregivers successfully completed the baseline survey. We randomized the caregivers into two experimental arms: treatment and control. One caregiver in the treatment group was dropped post-randomization as she was later identified as an officer from the Early Childhood Commission, Jamaica. This gave a final study sample of 557 caregivers in the treatment group and 559 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 and how to keep their child safe.

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

1,116 caregivers

1,116 caregivers

557 caregivers in the treatment group and 559 caregivers in the control group. This excludes 1 caregiver in the treatment group who was dropped post-randomization as she was later identified as an officer from the Early Childhood Commission, Jamaica.

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%.