Supporting Social and Emotional Competence in Preschool Children

NCT04512157 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: 259-2012-71
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 285
• Locations: 0 countries
• Sites: N/A

Brief Summary

Social emotional competence is instrumental to children's health and development. The preschool edition of Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies (PATHS®) intervention was tested in this study. PATHS® is a universal teacher implemented, and school-based intervention. In the first years of this study, PATHS® which was originally developed in the United States was adapted for a Swedish preschool context according to a theoretical model for intervention cultural adaptation entitled the Planned Intervention Adaptation (PIA) protocol. After the cultural adaptation process, a two-wave pre-posttest randomized controlled trial of PsPATHS was conducted with Swedish preschool aged children. Implementation data were collected and outcome evaluation results are being finalized at the time that this protocol is being submitted in August 2020.

Conditions

Children's Social Emotional Competence; Children's Well-being

Keywords

Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies; Preschool; Children; Sweden; PATHS

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (6)

• Emotional knowledge

  Child task: Emotional knowledge is measured by Assessment of Children's Emotions Skills (ACES; Schultz, et al., 2001) accuracy score. One point was given for each correct response. The 10 faces with clear emotional expressions were used for this scale score. The maximum score was 10, indicating excellent emotional knowledge.

  1 year

• Emotional awareness

  Child task: Emotional awareness is measured by the Challenging Situations Task (Denham et al., 1994) score called Label Emotional responses (sum score across four situations, with one point given for each correct response).

  1 year

• Social problem solving

  Child task: Social problem solving is measured by the Challenging Situations Task scores for competent, aggressive, and inept responses. For each category of response, a maximum of four was possible.

  1 year

• Inhibitory control 1

  Child task: inhibitory control as measured by number of correct responses on the Knock \& Tap task from NEPSY (Korkman et al., 1998). Possible range of scores was 0 to 30, with high scores indicating good inhibitory control.

  1 year

• Inhibitory control 2

  Child task: accuracy score on an adapted version of the Day-Night task (Gerstadt et al., 1994). Possible range of scores was 0 to 48, with high scores indicating good inhibitory control.

  1 year

• Working memory

  Child task: accuracy score on the Word span task as an index of working memory (Tillman et al., 2008). The score was calculated as the sum of correctly remembered words in the right order, maximum of 30 points, with high scores indicating good working memory.

  1 year

Secondary Outcomes (8)

• Prosocial/communication skills

  1 year

• Child's Emotional self-regulation

  1 year

• Child's Academic skills

  1 year

• Prosocial skills

  1 year

• Task orientation

  1 year

Other Outcomes (5)

• Social withdrawal (internalizing behavior)

  1 year

• Anxiety/somatic problems (internalizing behavior)

  1 year

• Aggression (externalizing behavior)

  1 year

Study Arms (2)

PATHS, Intervention preschools

EXPERIMENTAL

These preschools implement PATHS for one school year

Behavioral: Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), Preschool Edition

Waitlist control preschools

NO INTERVENTION

Preschool as usual, which does have some social emotional learning but not PATHS specifically

Interventions

Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), Preschool Edition BEHAVIORAL

PATHS® is a universal teacher implemented, and school-based intervention that aims to give preschool children a strategically timed boost in social emotional competence. Specifically, PATHS® encourages the use of interactive techniques to bolster children's ability to self-regulate, increase their adeptness at social cognitive problem solving, as well as to gain insight into their emotions and emotions of others.

Also known as: PATHS

PATHS, Intervention preschools

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 4 Years - 5 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17)

You may qualify if:

• Preschool level: Public or privately administered preschools with at least one classroom of 4- to 5-year old children, located within one of three selected municipalities in the Stockholm area.
• Individual child level: Children were included if they attended participating preschools, were 4 or 5 years old and had the written consent of their guardians, and if they had a sufficient understanding of Swedish to perform tasks.

You may not qualify if:

• Preschool level: Types of preschools excluded from study participation were open preschools, parent cooperative run preschools, and family day homes.
• Individual child level: Children were excluded if they did not have a sufficient understanding of Swedish to perform tasks.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Stockholm University: lead
• Göteborg University: collaborator
• Tarleton State University: collaborator

Related Publications (1)

• Eninger L, Ferrer-Wreder L, Eichas K, Olsson TM, Hau HG, Allodi MW, Smedler AC, Sedem M, Gull IC, Herkner B. A Cluster Randomized Trial of Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS(R)) With Swedish Preschool Children. Front Psychol. 2021 Jul 13;12:695288. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.695288. eCollection 2021.

  PMID: 34326800 DERIVED

Study Officials

• Lilianne Eninger, PhD

  Stockholm University

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

• Håkan Fischer, Department Head, PhD

  Stockholm University

  STUDY CHAIR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Masking Details: There was no masking after random assignment of recruited schools to condition (intervention or waitlist control condition).
• Purpose: PREVENTION
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Associate Professor in Psychology, Senior lecturer

Model Details: The design used was a cluster randomized controlled intervention trial, with a waitlist comparison group, with pre and post-testing.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: August 4, 2020
• First Posted: August 13, 2020
• Study Start: April 1, 2012
• Primary Completion: September 30, 2016
• Study Completion: September 30, 2016
• Last Updated: August 17, 2020

Record last verified: 2020-08

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL, SAP, ICF
• Time Frame: August 2020-August 2023
• Access Criteria: Individual data requests for de-identified (IPD) will be reviewed for qualified researchers (e.g., Ph.D.) who obtain ethical permission under Swedish ethical regulations/laws for secondary data analysis for purposes such as meta-analysis or confirmation of published study results.