Preventing Physical and Emotional Violence by Parents and Teachers in Public Schools in Tanzania (ICC-T/ICC-P_Tanz)

NCT06369025 | Completed DMC

• 1 other identifier: PreVio
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 1,848
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

More than 1.7 billion children worldwide experience violence in their upbringing. Prevalence rates are particularly high in Africa. Toxic stress associated with violence impacts the developing brain. This affects behavioral, social, and emotional functioning of children. The present project will test an intervention that simultaneously aims at reducing violence against children at home and at school. Within the project, (1) the feasibility, acceptability, and cost-effectiveness of the Intervention and (2) the initial effectiveness of reducing parental and teacher violence will be tested. To this end, a mixed-methods two-arm school-based pilot cluster-randomized controlled trial (CRCT) in Tanzania will be conducted. One unique and novel aspect of this project is to test a school-based intervention approach that targets both teachers and parents. A school-based approach including both teachers and parents has the following key advantages: (1) parents of different social, economic, and educational backgrounds can be motivated to participate and (2) using the existing infrastructure of schools reduces costs and will later improve the scalability of the program. The project is bringing together the global health, development economy, and psychological perspectives to promote our collaboration within the German global health community and with research and policy partners in Tanzania.

Conditions

Violence

Keywords

school violence; teacher violence; parental violence; family violence; children; public schools; primary schools

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (2)

• Reduction of children's exposure to emotional and physical violence by parents and teachers

  The Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) will be used to assess children's self-reported experiences of emotional and physical violence by parents at home and teachers at school in the past week. Higher scores indicate higher levels of violence that is used by parents or teachers. A stronger reduction of exposure to violence in the children of parents and teachers of the intervention group compared to the control group is hypothesized.

  The CTS will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

• Reduction of parents' or teachers' use of emotional and physical violence

  The Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) will be used to assess parents' and teachers' use of emotional and physical violent discipline measures against children in the past week. Higher scores indicate higher levels of violence that is used by parents or teachers. A stronger reduction of violence use by parents and teachers of the intervention group compared to the control group is hypothesized.

  The CTS will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

Secondary Outcomes (4)

• Change of parents' and teachers' attitudes towards emotional and physical violence

  The adapted version of CTS will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

• Improvement of children's mental health

  The PSC-Y will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (first follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

• Increase of children's quality of life

  The KIDSCREEN-10 will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

• Improvement of school climate

  The Teacher Relationship with Colleagues will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

Other Outcomes (4)

• Reduction of children's perceived stress

  The Stress Scale for Kids will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

• Reduction of parents' and teachers' perceived stress

  The Parental Stress Scale and the Teachers Stress Inventory will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

• Improvement of teachers' decision making

  Teacher Participation in Decision Making will be used at T1 (baseline, prior to intervention) and T2 (follow-up, 3 months after intervention)

Study Arms (2)

ICC-T & ICC-P

EXPERIMENTAL

ICC-T: 5 days with 8 hours of training for teachers. Core training components include teacher-student interaction, maltreatment prevention, effective discipline strategies, identifying and supporting burdened students and implementation of the training materials into the school setting. ICC-P: 4 days with 8 hours of training for parents. Core training components include parents-student interaction, maltreatment prevention, effective discipline strategies, identifying and supporting burdened children and implementation of the training materials into the daily home setting

Behavioral: Interaction Competencies with Children

Monitoring condition

NO INTERVENTION

No intervention

Interventions

Interaction Competencies with Children BEHAVIORAL

Interaction Competencies with Children - for Teachers (ICC-T) Core training components include teacher-student interaction, maltreatment prevention, effective discipline strategies, identifying and supporting burdened students and implementation of the training materials into the school setting. Interaction Competencies with Children - for Parents (ICC-P) Core training components include parents-child interaction, maltreatment prevention, effective discipline strategies, identifying and supporting burdened students and implementation of the training materials into the home

ICC-T & ICC-P

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 9 Years - 80 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• Schools:
• Public primary schools
• at least 45 students in selected class/ stream
• least 25 but no more than 50 employed teacher in selected school.
• All participants:
• \- Written informed consent (if underaged by parents (written) \& minors themselves (orally)
• Students:
• Enrollment in selected public primary school, age between 9 and 13 years
• living with their caregiver or parents near to the schools
• Teachers:
• employed at the selected schools
• aged between 18 and 60 years of age (statutory retirement age)
• Parents:
• their child is participating in the study and is enrolled in a study's eligible school,
• social parent (the parent currently taking care of the child independent of the biological relationship to the children; social parents can be biological parents, step-parents, foster parents, relatives, etc.)

You may not qualify if:

• Acute drug or alcohol intoxication,
• acute psychotic disorder
• severe mental disabilities

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Bielefeld University: lead
• Technical University of Munich: collaborator
• Dar es Salaam University College of Edcuation: collaborator
• Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Daressalaam University College of Education

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Location

Related Publications (1)

• Mattonet K, Kabelege E, Mkinga G, Kolwey L, Nkuba M, Masath FB, Hermenau K, Schupp C, Steinert JI, Hecker T. School-based prevention of teacher and parental violence against children: Study protocol of a cluster-randomized controlled trial in Tanzania. BMC Public Health. 2024 Aug 31;24(1):2367. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-19888-7.

  PMID: 39217292 DERIVED

Study Officials

• Tobias Hecker, Prof. Dr.

  Bielefeld University

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: DOUBLE
• Who Masked: PARTICIPANT, OUTCOMES ASSESSOR
• Purpose: PREVENTION
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Prof. Dr.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: April 12, 2024
• First Posted: April 16, 2024
• Study Start: April 15, 2024
• Primary Completion: February 28, 2025
• Study Completion: July 30, 2025
• Last Updated: September 19, 2025

Record last verified: 2025-09

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL, SAP, CSR, ANALYTIC CODE
• Time Frame: The anonymized data will be made publicly available after completion of the project in 2027
• Access Criteria: open source

Locations

TA (1)