A 20-year Follow-Up to an Early Childhood Stimulation Program in Jamaica

https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/20-year-follow-early-childhood-stimulation-program-jamaica

by okfine • 8 years ago

76 53 8 years ago

sytelus• 8 years ago

Method:

The stimulation intervention included weekly home visits by trained community health workers, who encouraged and instructed mothers on how to play and interact with their children. For the nutrition intervention, health workers distributed weekly nutritional supplements to homes, as well as additional cornmeal and skimmed milk powder to discourage sharing of the supplement with other family members.

Result:

Most notably, children who received stimulation achieved 0.6 more years of schooling, or 5.6 percent more schooling, than participating children who did not receive stimulation, and were nearly three times as likely to have had some college-level education.

cuchoi• 8 years ago

Methodology of evaluation:

Randomized Control Trial

lifeisstillgood• 8 years ago

Am I missing something in the wide gap between those figures - Children who got intervention X stayed in school for ~7 months longer and were also three times more likely to start college

The 5% more and the 300% more just seem wildly out of kilter

(It kind of makes sense - if all your peers stop school at 16 and you stay for 7 months or more, suddenly getting to college is a much easier step.) I think i am just surprised by how surprised i am

thaumasiotes3• 8 years ago

As I mention below, the very large 200% increase in college attendance is more likely to suggest that this demographic group has extremely low college attendance rates than that the intervention has an extremely high impact.

If you do your intervention and 2 out of 127 children enroll in a college when you would have expected 0.7, you've tripled the expected rate, but that was easy to do by chance.

In this case, the sample size was presumably half that, around 64.

loblollyboy• 8 years ago

It’s probably not just that they attended a little more, but that they were more on the ball when they were attending. I didn’t read the article tho

losvedir• 8 years ago

Well the 5% is averaged over the whole group while the 300% is from a base rate of those who go to college.

I haven't seen the data, so I don't know if this is the case, but one explanation is that this intervention works really well for some people, and not at all for others. Also, I think "3x more likely" means 200% more people.

So the numbers could be something like: 100 participants, 5 would have gone to college. The social stimulation really benefited 10 kids. They, in turn, did years more schooling and went to college. 5% -> 15% college rate is 3x more likely, but the 10 kids' large increase in attendance was averaged out over the group of 100, so the overall increase was just 5%.

Not saying this is the case, just showing a way those numbers could be plausible.

dalbasal• 8 years ago

They're not comparable on the same scale.

Say... Kids get 10.5 years schooling on average in neighborhood A. 12 years in neighborhood B. That is a 1.5 years or 15% difference. In a 12 grade system, this is the best possible result implying a 100% completion rate.

Neighborhood A sends 10% of all kids to college. Neighborhood B sends 50% of all kids to college. That's a 500% difference.

This example seems pretty plausible. A neighborhood where an average kid makes it halfway through 10th grade probably sends a lot fewer kids to college than a neighborhood with a 100% completion rate for grade 12.

misterhtmlcss• 8 years ago

Simply put this research at this stage proves nothing, however it could indicate an area requiring further analysis, but that's about it.

"Correlation does not imply causation" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_cause_and_consequen...

It's really easy to see that lots of reasons that aren't directly due to the program could have caused the changes. It could have been as simple as an expectation change amongst the parents, upon joining the program; how their children will perform better and therefore they did or it could have been the parents in the neighborhood most engaged in their children having a better life and when the opportunity to join the program became available they joined.

Stuff like this is notoriously difficult to prove, but I'm hopeful and glad to see research is being done.

wojtekkru• 8 years ago

"The original ECD program, which lasted two years, enrolled 127 stunted children aged 9-24 months. Researchers randomly assigned these children to one of four groups: a psychosocial stimulation intervention, a nutrition intervention, both interventions, or neither intervention (the comparison group)."

That was my first thought too: the positive results could be effect of special attention and expectations (placebo effect). However comparing "both interventions" group with each single intervention group should address this.

pastage• 8 years ago

Three times as likely to get college level education is amazing, children and parents really are the future.

thaumasiotes3• 8 years ago

Three times as likely to get college level education is amazing

To me this seems like a warning that the intervention is unlikely to have much effect as applied to society in general. Three times the likelihood of an impoverished Jamaican going to college isn't that impressive. On the other hand, if we accepted this assessment of impact in the terms being reported here, applying it to better-off people could lead to more than 240% of their children going to college!

...which again suggests that whatever's going on is probably better viewed in other terms.

emj2• 8 years ago

I do not understand you at all, you comment can be read as a fairly common statement around here: education for rich kids is not always a good thing. While the article is about how families that have time to value their young are much more likely to educate them. How can you compare these two outliers?

olfactory• 8 years ago

Nurture is the major factor in nearly every aspect of human achievement. Alternative explanations justify genocide, neglect, and let adults off the hook.

Filligree• 8 years ago

Alternative explanations justify genocide, neglect, and let adults off the hook.

While possibly true, none of those claims have any bearing on whether or not those alternate explanations are false.

ibeckermayer• 8 years ago

Genocide? Umm, care to explain how that follows?

airstrike10• 8 years ago

Education should be society's #1 priority. I find it truly baffling that we have yet to agree on this -- or, if by some reason you think we have agreed, that we haven't acted on it.

cortesoft• 8 years ago

Really? The #1 priority? Over keeping people fed and housed?

airstrike10• 8 years ago

Yes. People can feed themselves and afford housing if they're educated.

SamReidHughes2• 8 years ago

How many years of education is the right amount?

airstrike10• 8 years ago

It's not just about quantity. And even if the central issue was figuring out how many years of education people need, that wouldn't negate my claim that the subject is of the utmost importance.

abecedarius5• 8 years ago

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11225.html argues that we have way too much education. That matches my experience. It's a giant problem that too many people are ignorant, but I don't agree that more school is the answer.

airstrike10• 8 years ago

I think the authors misses the target as his arguments seem to be mostly against the current educational system as it stands, not against an educated workforce.

ismail• 8 years ago

Does education = learning, and does education result in knowledge, does education = benefit to society?

The reason I ask is: we did an exercise recently where we had to go through the various assumptions for a product. The assumptions we made were

1: education = better outcomes

2: more education = better

3: formal higher education is necessary for getting a job

4: people actually need to get jobs

I am not convinced these are true.

emj2• 8 years ago

Then you have to ask yourself where that belief comes from for each item try hard to disprove it. It is only based on opinion to a certain point.

collyw• 8 years ago

Agreed. When I have traveled to Nepal, a very poor country some children speak very good English, so that implies a certain level of education, yet there are very few opportunities for them there.

Someone who has a lot less education in the UK would likely have far more opportunities.

oz• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure this study was mentioned in a recent episode of EconTalk, where the guest was talking about statistical significance, p-hacking, etc. I'm Jamaican, so I perked up when it came up.

pkAbstract3• 8 years ago

I'm surprised that the psychosocial intervention was as effective as it was, however I expected the nutrition arm of the trial to fare better. I guess interacting with intelligent and engaging adults as a child really has long-term developmental benefits.

wolco• 8 years ago

nutrition is a relative concept. Cornmeal and skin milk are not going to produce amazing result by themselves.

pkAbstract3• 8 years ago

The cornmeal and skim milk was provided to the baby's family in order to discourage them from distributing the baby's formula:

"The nutritional intervention (groups 2 and 3) consisted of giving 1 kg of formula containing 66% of daily-recommended energy (calories), protein, and micronutrients provided weekly for 24 months"

The article implies that the families likely split the formula for multiple members, thus diminishing any effect it may have had on the baby's development.

gwern• 8 years ago

Another Heckman study. Oh, I thought this sounded familiar: http://andrewgelman.com/2013/11/05/how-much-do-we-trust-this...

A 20-year Follow-Up to an Early Childhood Stimulation Program in Jamaica

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