ESRI Research Seminar - Intervening Early to Promote Children’s Health and Development: an RCT of the Preparing for Life Programme

Venue : ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2

Speaker : Orla Doyle, UCD School of Economics & UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy

Early intervention programmes aimed at high-risk children provide a potential mechanism for reducing disparities in children’s development; however European evidence on their effectiveness is limited. This study investigates the impact of Preparing for Life (PFL), a five year home visiting intervention, on several dimensions of children’s human capital.

PFL is a manualized programme which aims to improve the school readiness skills of disadvantaged children in Ireland. The intervention commences during pregnancy and works with families until the children start school. Treatment include bi-weekly home visits from a mentor to support parenting and child development using Tip Sheets and the Triple P positive parenting programme at age 2.Using a randomized controlled trial design, this study examined the impact of the programme at age 4 by comparing the outcomes of the treatment (n=115) and control (n=118) groups using permutation testing methods to address small sample size, inverse probability weighting to address differential attrition, and a stepdown procedure to account for multiple hypothesis testing.

The programme had a positive impact on children’s cognitive development, socioemotional development, and health as measured by the British Ability Scales, the Child Behaviour Checklist, and several measures of physical health, with effect sizes ranging from 0.20 to 0.73. The findings indicate that home visiting interventions commencing prenatally may be an effective method of improving the early human capital of disadvantaged children. The sizes of the effects are notable and exceed current meta-analytic estimations in the field.

Speaker Bio

Dr Orla Doyle is a senior researcher at the UCD Geary Institute and Lecturer in the UCD School of Economics. She is currently running a number of studies evaluating the effectiveness of early intervention in children’s lives to improve their later life outcomes. The hallmark of this research is the use of experimental and quasi-experimental designs to measure programme impact. The longest running study is the evaluation of the Preparing for Life (PFL) Programme. The programme aims to improve levels of school readiness in several disadvantaged communities of Dublin, beginning during pregnancy and lasting until the children start school.