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Can Targeted Intervention Mitigate Early Emotional and Behavioral Problems?: Generating Robust Evidence within Randomized Controlled Trials

This study examined the impact of a targeted Irish early intervention program on children’s emotional and behavioral development using multiple methods to test the robustness of the results. Data on 164 Preparing for Life participants who were randomly assigned into an intervention group, involving...

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Autores principales: Doyle, Orla, McGlanaghy, Edel, O’Farrelly, Christine, Tremblay, Richard E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4890862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27253184
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0156397
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author Doyle, Orla
McGlanaghy, Edel
O’Farrelly, Christine
Tremblay, Richard E.
author_facet Doyle, Orla
McGlanaghy, Edel
O’Farrelly, Christine
Tremblay, Richard E.
author_sort Doyle, Orla
collection PubMed
description This study examined the impact of a targeted Irish early intervention program on children’s emotional and behavioral development using multiple methods to test the robustness of the results. Data on 164 Preparing for Life participants who were randomly assigned into an intervention group, involving home visits from pregnancy onwards, or a control group, was used to test the impact of the intervention on Child Behavior Checklist scores at 24-months. Using inverse probability weighting to account for differential attrition, permutation testing to address small sample size, and quantile regression to characterize the distributional impact of the intervention, we found that the few treatment effects were largely concentrated among boys most at risk of developing emotional and behavioral problems. The average treatment effect identified a 13% reduction in the likelihood of falling into the borderline clinical threshold for Total Problems. The interaction and subgroup analysis found that this main effect was driven by boys. The distributional analysis identified a 10-point reduction in the Externalizing Problems score for boys at the 90(th) percentile. No effects were observed for girls or for the continuous measures of Total, Internalizing, and Externalizing problems. These findings suggest that the impact of this prenatally commencing home visiting program may be limited to boys experiencing the most difficulties. Further adoption of the statistical methods applied here may help to improve the internal validity of randomized controlled trials and contribute to the field of evaluation science more generally. Trial Registration: ISRCTN Registry ISRCTN04631728
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spelling pubmed-48908622016-06-10 Can Targeted Intervention Mitigate Early Emotional and Behavioral Problems?: Generating Robust Evidence within Randomized Controlled Trials Doyle, Orla McGlanaghy, Edel O’Farrelly, Christine Tremblay, Richard E. PLoS One Research Article This study examined the impact of a targeted Irish early intervention program on children’s emotional and behavioral development using multiple methods to test the robustness of the results. Data on 164 Preparing for Life participants who were randomly assigned into an intervention group, involving home visits from pregnancy onwards, or a control group, was used to test the impact of the intervention on Child Behavior Checklist scores at 24-months. Using inverse probability weighting to account for differential attrition, permutation testing to address small sample size, and quantile regression to characterize the distributional impact of the intervention, we found that the few treatment effects were largely concentrated among boys most at risk of developing emotional and behavioral problems. The average treatment effect identified a 13% reduction in the likelihood of falling into the borderline clinical threshold for Total Problems. The interaction and subgroup analysis found that this main effect was driven by boys. The distributional analysis identified a 10-point reduction in the Externalizing Problems score for boys at the 90(th) percentile. No effects were observed for girls or for the continuous measures of Total, Internalizing, and Externalizing problems. These findings suggest that the impact of this prenatally commencing home visiting program may be limited to boys experiencing the most difficulties. Further adoption of the statistical methods applied here may help to improve the internal validity of randomized controlled trials and contribute to the field of evaluation science more generally. Trial Registration: ISRCTN Registry ISRCTN04631728 Public Library of Science 2016-06-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4890862/ /pubmed/27253184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0156397 Text en © 2016 Doyle et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Doyle, Orla
McGlanaghy, Edel
O’Farrelly, Christine
Tremblay, Richard E.
Can Targeted Intervention Mitigate Early Emotional and Behavioral Problems?: Generating Robust Evidence within Randomized Controlled Trials
title Can Targeted Intervention Mitigate Early Emotional and Behavioral Problems?: Generating Robust Evidence within Randomized Controlled Trials
title_full Can Targeted Intervention Mitigate Early Emotional and Behavioral Problems?: Generating Robust Evidence within Randomized Controlled Trials
title_fullStr Can Targeted Intervention Mitigate Early Emotional and Behavioral Problems?: Generating Robust Evidence within Randomized Controlled Trials
title_full_unstemmed Can Targeted Intervention Mitigate Early Emotional and Behavioral Problems?: Generating Robust Evidence within Randomized Controlled Trials
title_short Can Targeted Intervention Mitigate Early Emotional and Behavioral Problems?: Generating Robust Evidence within Randomized Controlled Trials
title_sort can targeted intervention mitigate early emotional and behavioral problems?: generating robust evidence within randomized controlled trials
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4890862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27253184
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0156397
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