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Evaluating ‘Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: This article reports the results from a feasibility study of an intervention (‘E-PLAYS’) aimed at supporting children who experience difficulties with social communication. E-PLAYS is based around a dyadic computer game, which aims to develop collaborative and communication skills. A pil...

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Autores principales: Murphy, Suzanne, Joffe, Victoria, Donald, Louisa, Radley, Jessica, Sunthararajah, Sailaa, Welch, Charlie, Bell, Kerry, Messer, David, Crafter, Sarah, Fairhurst, Caroline, Corbacho, Belen, Rodgers, Sara, Torgerson, David
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7780650/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33390188
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40814-020-00724-9
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author Murphy, Suzanne
Joffe, Victoria
Donald, Louisa
Radley, Jessica
Sunthararajah, Sailaa
Welch, Charlie
Bell, Kerry
Messer, David
Crafter, Sarah
Fairhurst, Caroline
Corbacho, Belen
Rodgers, Sara
Torgerson, David
author_facet Murphy, Suzanne
Joffe, Victoria
Donald, Louisa
Radley, Jessica
Sunthararajah, Sailaa
Welch, Charlie
Bell, Kerry
Messer, David
Crafter, Sarah
Fairhurst, Caroline
Corbacho, Belen
Rodgers, Sara
Torgerson, David
author_sort Murphy, Suzanne
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: This article reports the results from a feasibility study of an intervention (‘E-PLAYS’) aimed at supporting children who experience difficulties with social communication. E-PLAYS is based around a dyadic computer game, which aims to develop collaborative and communication skills. A pilot study found that when E-PLAYS was delivered by researchers, improvements on communication test scores and on collaborative behaviours were observed. The aim of this study was to ascertain the feasibility of running a full-scale trial to test the effectiveness of E-PLAYS in a National Health Service (NHS) setting with delivery by speech and language therapists and teaching assistants. METHODS: The study was a two-arm feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial of the E-PLAYS intervention with a treatment as usual control arm. Data relating to recruitment and retention, treatment fidelity, acceptability to participants, suitability of outcomes and feasibility of collecting health economic measures and of determining cost-effectiveness were collected. Speech and language therapists selected suitable children (ages 4–7 years old) from their caseload. E-PLAYS intervention (experimental group) was then delivered by teaching assistants overseen by speech and language therapists. The control group received usual care. Assessments included blinded language measures and observations, non-blinded teacher-reported measures of peer relations and classroom behaviour and non-blinded parent-reported use of health and education resources and quality of life. RESULTS: Planned recruitment was for 70 children, in the event, 50 children were recruited which was sufficient for feasibility purposes. E-PLAYS was very highly rated by children, teaching assistants and speech and language therapists and treatment fidelity did not pose any issues. We were able to collect health economic data which suggests that E-PLAYS would be a low-cost intervention. CONCLUSION: Based on recruitment, retention and adherence rates and our outcome measures, a full-scale randomised controlled trial estimated appears feasible and warranted to assess the effectiveness of E-PLAYS for use by the NHS and schools. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN 14818949 (retrospectively registered).
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spelling pubmed-77806502021-01-05 Evaluating ‘Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial Murphy, Suzanne Joffe, Victoria Donald, Louisa Radley, Jessica Sunthararajah, Sailaa Welch, Charlie Bell, Kerry Messer, David Crafter, Sarah Fairhurst, Caroline Corbacho, Belen Rodgers, Sara Torgerson, David Pilot Feasibility Stud Research BACKGROUND: This article reports the results from a feasibility study of an intervention (‘E-PLAYS’) aimed at supporting children who experience difficulties with social communication. E-PLAYS is based around a dyadic computer game, which aims to develop collaborative and communication skills. A pilot study found that when E-PLAYS was delivered by researchers, improvements on communication test scores and on collaborative behaviours were observed. The aim of this study was to ascertain the feasibility of running a full-scale trial to test the effectiveness of E-PLAYS in a National Health Service (NHS) setting with delivery by speech and language therapists and teaching assistants. METHODS: The study was a two-arm feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial of the E-PLAYS intervention with a treatment as usual control arm. Data relating to recruitment and retention, treatment fidelity, acceptability to participants, suitability of outcomes and feasibility of collecting health economic measures and of determining cost-effectiveness were collected. Speech and language therapists selected suitable children (ages 4–7 years old) from their caseload. E-PLAYS intervention (experimental group) was then delivered by teaching assistants overseen by speech and language therapists. The control group received usual care. Assessments included blinded language measures and observations, non-blinded teacher-reported measures of peer relations and classroom behaviour and non-blinded parent-reported use of health and education resources and quality of life. RESULTS: Planned recruitment was for 70 children, in the event, 50 children were recruited which was sufficient for feasibility purposes. E-PLAYS was very highly rated by children, teaching assistants and speech and language therapists and treatment fidelity did not pose any issues. We were able to collect health economic data which suggests that E-PLAYS would be a low-cost intervention. CONCLUSION: Based on recruitment, retention and adherence rates and our outcome measures, a full-scale randomised controlled trial estimated appears feasible and warranted to assess the effectiveness of E-PLAYS for use by the NHS and schools. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN 14818949 (retrospectively registered). BioMed Central 2021-01-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7780650/ /pubmed/33390188 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40814-020-00724-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Murphy, Suzanne
Joffe, Victoria
Donald, Louisa
Radley, Jessica
Sunthararajah, Sailaa
Welch, Charlie
Bell, Kerry
Messer, David
Crafter, Sarah
Fairhurst, Caroline
Corbacho, Belen
Rodgers, Sara
Torgerson, David
Evaluating ‘Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial
title Evaluating ‘Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial
title_full Evaluating ‘Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial
title_fullStr Evaluating ‘Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial
title_full_unstemmed Evaluating ‘Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial
title_short Evaluating ‘Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial
title_sort evaluating ‘enhancing pragmatic language skills for young children with social communication impairments’ (e-plays): a feasibility cluster-randomised controlled trial
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7780650/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33390188
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40814-020-00724-9
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