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Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial

Early childhood care and education providers (CCPs) work with over 7 million young children. These children are vulnerable to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and neglect. However, CCPs make less than 1% of all reports of suspected child abuse and neglect that are made to child protective servi...

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Autores principales: Mathews, Ben, Yang, Chengwu, Lehman, Erik B., Mincemoyer, Claudia, Verdiglione, Nicole, Levi, Benjamin H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5438118/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28542285
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177777
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author Mathews, Ben
Yang, Chengwu
Lehman, Erik B.
Mincemoyer, Claudia
Verdiglione, Nicole
Levi, Benjamin H.
author_facet Mathews, Ben
Yang, Chengwu
Lehman, Erik B.
Mincemoyer, Claudia
Verdiglione, Nicole
Levi, Benjamin H.
author_sort Mathews, Ben
collection PubMed
description Early childhood care and education providers (CCPs) work with over 7 million young children. These children are vulnerable to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and neglect. However, CCPs make less than 1% of all reports of suspected child abuse and neglect that are made to child protective services. CCPs are therefore an untapped resource in the public health response to child maltreatment. However, their knowledge and attitudes about duties to report child maltreatment are poorly understood. Moreover, no rigorous research has tested whether their knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment can be improved. These gaps in knowledge are important because knowledge of the duty and positive attitudes towards it produce more effective reporting, and little evidence exists about how to enhance cognitive and affective attributes. Using the CONSORT approach, we report a single-blind test-retest randomized controlled trial evaluating iLook Out for Child Abuse, a customized online educational intervention for CCPs to increase knowledge and attitudes towards the reporting duty. 762 participants were randomized with results analyzed for 741 participants (372 in the intervention group; 369 in the control). Knowledge of the reporting duty increased in the intervention group from 13.54 to 16.19 out of 21 (2.65 increase, 95% CI: (2.37, 2.93); large effect size 0.95, p < 0.001); the control group remained stable, moving from 13.54 to 13.59 (0.05 increase, 95% CI: (-0.12, 0.22); negligible effect size 0.03, p = 0.684). Attitudes were enhanced on all 13 items for the intervention group, remaining stable in the control, with significant differences between groups on all items (p < 0.05). Gains were largely sustained at four month follow-up. Findings support education for CCPs and other professions. Future research should also explore effects of education on reporting behavior. Trial registration: US National Institutes of Health NCT02225301
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spelling pubmed-54381182017-05-27 Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial Mathews, Ben Yang, Chengwu Lehman, Erik B. Mincemoyer, Claudia Verdiglione, Nicole Levi, Benjamin H. PLoS One Research Article Early childhood care and education providers (CCPs) work with over 7 million young children. These children are vulnerable to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and neglect. However, CCPs make less than 1% of all reports of suspected child abuse and neglect that are made to child protective services. CCPs are therefore an untapped resource in the public health response to child maltreatment. However, their knowledge and attitudes about duties to report child maltreatment are poorly understood. Moreover, no rigorous research has tested whether their knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment can be improved. These gaps in knowledge are important because knowledge of the duty and positive attitudes towards it produce more effective reporting, and little evidence exists about how to enhance cognitive and affective attributes. Using the CONSORT approach, we report a single-blind test-retest randomized controlled trial evaluating iLook Out for Child Abuse, a customized online educational intervention for CCPs to increase knowledge and attitudes towards the reporting duty. 762 participants were randomized with results analyzed for 741 participants (372 in the intervention group; 369 in the control). Knowledge of the reporting duty increased in the intervention group from 13.54 to 16.19 out of 21 (2.65 increase, 95% CI: (2.37, 2.93); large effect size 0.95, p < 0.001); the control group remained stable, moving from 13.54 to 13.59 (0.05 increase, 95% CI: (-0.12, 0.22); negligible effect size 0.03, p = 0.684). Attitudes were enhanced on all 13 items for the intervention group, remaining stable in the control, with significant differences between groups on all items (p < 0.05). Gains were largely sustained at four month follow-up. Findings support education for CCPs and other professions. Future research should also explore effects of education on reporting behavior. Trial registration: US National Institutes of Health NCT02225301 Public Library of Science 2017-05-19 /pmc/articles/PMC5438118/ /pubmed/28542285 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177777 Text en © 2017 Mathews 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
Mathews, Ben
Yang, Chengwu
Lehman, Erik B.
Mincemoyer, Claudia
Verdiglione, Nicole
Levi, Benjamin H.
Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial
title Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial
title_full Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial
title_fullStr Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial
title_full_unstemmed Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial
title_short Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial
title_sort educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: a randomized controlled trial
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5438118/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28542285
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177777
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