Doyle Orla, Delaney Liam, O'Farrelly Christine, Fitzpatrick Nick, Daly Michael
UCD School of Economics & UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Behavioural Science Centre, Stirling Management School, Stirling University, United Kingdom & UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
PLoS One. 2017 Jan 17;12(1):e0169829. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169829. eCollection 2017.
This study estimates the effect of a targeted early childhood intervention program on global and experienced measures of maternal well-being utilizing a randomized controlled trial design. The primary aim of the intervention is to improve children's school readiness skills by working directly with parents to improve their knowledge of child development and parenting behavior. One potential externality of the program is well-being benefits for parents given its direct focus on improving parental coping, self-efficacy, and problem solving skills, as well as generating an indirect effect on parental well-being by targeting child developmental problems.
Participants from a socio-economically disadvantaged community are randomly assigned during pregnancy to an intensive 5-year home visiting parenting program or a control group. We estimate and compare treatment effects on multiple measures of global and experienced well-being using permutation testing to account for small sample size and a stepdown procedure to account for multiple testing.
The intervention has no impact on global well-being as measured by life satisfaction and parenting stress or experienced negative affect using episodic reports derived from the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM). Treatment effects are observed on measures of experienced positive affect derived from the DRM and a measure of mood yesterday.
The limited treatment effects suggest that early intervention programs may produce some improvements in experienced positive well-being, but no effects on negative aspects of well-being. Different findings across measures may result as experienced measures of well-being avoid the cognitive biases that impinge upon global assessments.
本研究采用随机对照试验设计，评估一项针对幼儿的早期干预项目对母亲幸福感的整体及实际感受指标的影响。该干预的主要目标是通过直接与家长合作，提高他们对儿童发展和育儿行为的认知，从而提升孩子的入学准备技能。鉴于该项目直接致力于改善家长的应对能力、自我效能感和解决问题的技能，以及通过针对儿童发展问题对家长幸福感产生间接影响，其一个潜在的外部效应是给家长带来幸福感益处。
来自社会经济弱势社区的参与者在孕期被随机分配到一个为期5年的强化家访育儿项目或对照组。我们使用排列检验来处理小样本量问题，并采用逐步检验程序来处理多重检验问题，估计并比较该干预对整体及实际感受幸福感的多个指标的治疗效果。
以生活满意度和育儿压力衡量的整体幸福感，或采用日重建法（DRM）得出的情景报告所衡量的实际感受负面影响方面，该干预没有影响。在采用DRM得出的实际感受积极影响指标和昨天的情绪指标上观察到了治疗效果。
有限的治疗效果表明，早期干预项目可能会在实际感受的积极幸福感方面产生一些改善，但对幸福感的消极方面没有影响。不同指标的不同结果可能是由于实际感受幸福感指标避免了影响整体评估的认知偏差。
