Supporting Social and Emotional Competence in Preschool Children: A Study of the Cultural Adaptation and Effectiveness of Preschool Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies (PsPATHS)

Stockholm University0 sites285 target enrollmentApril 1, 2012

Overview

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.

Detailed Description

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 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. 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. PIA calls for specific small-scale research studies that guide the cultural adaptation of an imported intervention. After the cultural adaptation process, a two-wave pre-posttest randomized controlled trial of PsPATHS was conducted with Swedish preschool aged children. The main study, which this protocol documents was a two-wave pre to posttest, cluster randomized controlled trial with multi-method and informant assessment (N = 285 four and five-year-old Swedish children; 145 wait-list control and 140 intervention). Implementation data were collected and outcome evaluation results are being finalized at the time that this protocol is being submitted in August 2020.

Registry

clinicaltrials.gov

Start Date

April 1, 2012

End Date

September 30, 2016

Last Updated

5 years ago

Study Type

Interventional

Study Design

Parallel

Sex

All

Investigators

Sponsor

Stockholm University

Responsible Party

Principal Investigator

Lilianne Eninger

Associate Professor in Psychology, Senior lecturer

Stockholm University

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

Not provided

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Social problem solving

Time Frame: 1 year

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.

Inhibitory control 1

Time Frame: 1 year

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.

Working memory

Time Frame: 1 year

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.

Emotional knowledge

Time Frame: 1 year

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.

Emotional awareness

Time Frame: 1 year

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).

Inhibitory control 2

Time Frame: 1 year

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.