An Early Childhood Internet-based and Family-based Intervention Study

NCT04512352 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: early-childhood-2020
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 233
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 6

Brief Summary

The poverty rate among children under 18 years old in Hong Kong in 2015 was 18% after social welfare intervention. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize winner in Economics, advocates early childhood investment to enhance social mobility, given its lifelong impact of on child development. However, few randomized control trails have been used to examine the effectiveness of early childhood intervention in promoting social mobility through child development in Hong Kong. To fill these gaps, we propose an interdisciplinary intervention study involving academics from economics, sociology, social work, gerontology, education, and psychology to investigate methods to promote the social mobility of children living in poverty through early intervention. The overall objective is to enhance the developmental outcomes of children in poverty by utilizing parental resources within a family system, technological resources available in modern metropolis and the human resources enjoyed by the elderly in Hong Kong. The primary objective is to evaluate an internet- and family-based intervention to promote the development of children in poverty enrolled in the first year of Hong Kong's nurseries, who are mostly aged 24 months to three years. The examined outcomes will be the developmental well-being of participating children and parenting attitudes and behaviors, with the long-term goal of promoting their social mobility to break the cycle of poverty. In the long run, we aim to establish the proposed intervention in policy to promote the development of disadvantaged children. The secondary objective is to identify intergenerational volunteerism as a means for productive aging through a mentoring program using older adults as mentors to participating parents.

Conditions

Early Childhood Development

Keywords

Social mobility & poverty; Internet & family-based; Early childhood intervetion; Intergenerational; Productive aging

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development- Third Edition

  Bayley-III is a comprehensive tool to identify development issues during early childhood through direct assessment of the child. Domains include: Cognitive, Receptive Communication, Expressive Communication, Fine Motor, Gross Motor. The minimum scaled score is 1 and maximum scaled score is 19. A higher score means a better outcome.

  Change from baseline assessment at 10 months

Secondary Outcomes (4)

• Parenting Sense of Competence Scale- Chinese

  Change from baseline assessment at 10 months

• Chinese version of the Parental Feeding Style Questionnaire

  Change from baseline assessment at 10 months

• Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 10-item

  Change from baseline assessment at 10 months

• The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support-Chinese

  Change from baseline assessment at 10 months

Other Outcomes (10)

• The Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ) -3 (Third Edition)

  Change from baseline assessment at 10 months

• Ages and Stages Questionnaire: Social-Emotional- 2 (Second Edition)

  Change from baseline assessment at 10 months

• Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire

  Change from baseline assessment at 10 months

Study Arms (2)

Treatment group

EXPERIMENTAL

Online curriculum has been delivered to this group of participants on an Internet-based platform

Other: Online curriculum

Wait-list control group

NO INTERVENTION

Participants in wait-list control group would not have access to the online curriculum until the intervention process for treatment group is finished.

Interventions

Online curriculum OTHER

The psychologist and our advisory team had successfully developed a total of 100 hours of parenting curriculum. The adopted curriculum had focused on using play to facilitate parents in promoting their children's development in cognitive, motor, emotional and social aspects. Play-based activities are instrumental in improving children's development. Given that parents in poverty had difficulties spending time and money travelling back-and-forth to the training site and their homes, the research team decided to use e-learning as the medium of learning for our parenting programme. Web-based learning has the advantage of cutting time and travelling costs, which are luxuries to many parents in poverty.

Treatment group

Eligibility Criteria

• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• Parents who have children enrolled in the first year of Hong Kong nurseries ("N1"), mostly aged 24 months to 3 years

You may not qualify if:

• Parents who do not have children enrolled in the first year of Hong Kong nurseries ("N1")

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The University of Hong Kong: lead

Study Sites (6)

Hong Kong Christian Service

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Location

Hong Kong Lutheran Social Service

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Location

Hong Kong Young Women's Christian Association

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Location

Po Leung Kuk

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Location

The Salvation Army

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Location

Tung Wah Group of Hospitals

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Location

Study Officials

• Pauline Sung-Chan, Ph.D

  Hong Kong Institute of Economics and Business Strategy

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: PARTICIPANT
• Masking Details: Participants are not aware of which arm they are in
• Purpose: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Model Details: Large-scale survey: Using the stratified sampling method, a randomized list of 60 samples was selected from the official list of 506 kindergartens-cum-child care center provided by the Bureau of Education. Out of the 60 schools, a total of 40 schools from 12 NGOs agreed to join the survey. As of April 2019, we have received 700 responses for the survey. Intervention Study: There are two phases of intervention in this stage. The total sample size for both phases is 200 parent-child dyads. For both phases, the team applied stratified randomization method for randomization. Participants were assigned to either treatment group or wait-list control group on a school basis.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: May 15, 2020
• First Posted: August 13, 2020
• Study Start: November 1, 2017
• Primary Completion: May 31, 2020
• Study Completion: September 30, 2021
• Last Updated: June 18, 2025

Record last verified: 2020-08

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: ANALYTIC CODE
• Time Frame: Ten years upon the completion of this project
• Access Criteria: For research purpose only

Locations

HK (6)