Improving early childhood development in rural Ghana through scalable low-cost community-run play schemes

Completed

• Conditions: Childhood cognitive, socio-emotional, and motor development and hygiene practices.; Mental and Behavioural Disorders; Child development

• Registration Number: ISRCTN21215509
• Lead Sponsor: Institute for Fiscal Studies

Brief Summary

Not available

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Results First Posted: 1900-01-01
• Study Start: 2018-05-16
• Last Update Posted: 11 June 2018
• Study Completion: 2019-06-14

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 2400

Inclusion Criteria

There are three kinds of participants in the study; target children, volunteer mothers, and kindergarten teachers. The inclusion criteria are as follows:
1. Children
To be part of the intervention, children have to be attending the kindergarten of one of the 40 treatment schools. They can be either male or female. Officially only those aged 4 and 5 are supposed to be attending kindergarten, however in reality there are many children who attend that are not in this age range. Of these total participants, a subset will be chosen to be part of our sample and therefore surveyed. These children are chosen as a random sample of all children meeting the following inclusion criteria:
1.1. Aged 3-5 years as of the start of the school term 11th September 2017
1.2. Reported in July 2017 that they are either currently attending one of the 80 study schools or intend to do so come the start of school term in September 2017
2. Mothers
Volunteers in the place scheme can be anyone willing to take part as long as they are female – this is because a major focus of the program is on female empowerment. Our sample of volunteer mothers to be surveyed will be made up from the sample of primary caregivers. Hence to be eligible to be surveyed, individuals must be the primary caregiver of one of the sampled target children.
3. Teachers
The only requirement of kindergarten teachers is that they are a teacher in one of the study schools as of the start of the intervention in October 2017. All kindergarten teachers in the study schools will be surveyed.

Exclusion Criteria

Inclusion criteria not met.

Study & Design

• Study Type: Interventional
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
The primary outcome is children’s cognitive and socio-emotional developmental outcomes. We will measure developmental outcomes of the child, through the use of the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) tool, developed by Save the Children. This provides measures of development along 5 core domains; emergent numeracy, emergent literacy, socio-emotional skills, motor skills, and executive function. The full set of primary outcomes will be measured at two timepoints; baseline - before the start of the intervention (September 2017), and endline - soon after the end of the intervention 10 months later (August 2018). In addition a reduced form of the IDELA will be delivered at midline - the midway point of the intervention (March 2018).