Longitudinal Design - Intervention & RCTs Flashcards
Hane et al. - Methods
Family nurture intervention (FNI) - randomised control trial in neonatal intensive care unit - some received standard care others FNI
– Facilitates emotional connections between mothers and premature babies
Did scent cloth exchanges, vocal soothing, eye contact, skin-to-skin…
Coded maternal quality in one follow-up session at 36 weeks - recorded for 15 minutes and coded for qualities
Measured other factors to assess impact, e.g. maternal depression
Hane et al. - Aims
Assess whether FNI has an impact on quality of maternal caregiving.
Hane et al. - Limitations
Findings may not generalise - from the same hospital so lots of shared variance in terms of demographics, race, culture, etc. Could pull from various different locations - see influence of staff on FNI?
Only one recorded session - limited internal validity. Improve by having multiple time point visits or longer sessions - mother may not be fully comfortable in limited time frame - not as ecologically valid?
No long-term follow-up; short-term conclusions only
High drop out rate - bigger sample ideal but a problem of developmental research
No pre-test
Humphreys et al. - methods
12-year follow up of BEIP children
Used control Romanian never-institutionalised group to measure institutionalised vs. not (account for cultural diffs)
- Between-subjects randomised control trial - divided into foster care (intervention) or care as usual (control)
Used care-as-usual Romanian children in institutions to measure causal effect of changing from that to new model of foster care
- recruited from schools - comparison to typical development
Used a structured interview to measure presence of psychopathology - ADHD and internalising/externalising symptoms
Humphreys et al. - aims
1) psychopathology in institutional rearing vs. never
2) pscyhopathology in children in insitutional (care as usual) vs. foster care
3) foster placement stability and psychopathology
Humphreys et al. - Limitations?
used caregiver self-report - potential bias to social desirability
– child self-report could give better insight into the child’s subjective perspective (their own experience) but they need to be able to comprehend the questions - many had low IQ
– could reduce by using multiple informants - teachers would be good for how ADHD presents as children often struggle in the classroom
caregivers in institutions may not have much time - not as much 1:1 time as foster parents
– the two aren’t fully comparable - teachers would be better as time spent with all children more equal
Wimer et al. - methods
Baseline pre-test of all ppts
– recorded demographic/economic/predictive outcomes were recorded
Random assignment of all these ppts to either control or room to grow intervention - between-subjects
Measured again at 10.5 months impact of room to grow on initially measured outcomes assessed through a post-test self-report measure and observational measures by researcher
Wimer et al. - aims
1) Impact of room to grow after 1 year on a number of outcomes (parenting, mental health)
Wimer et al. - limitations
Observations were not detailed/giving very rich data
Researchers were not blind to control vs. experimental condition when observing - could impact and thus reduces validity with researcher bias
Parents in both conditions could have learned from pretest and applied to post test measures as they were measuring similar things
