A randomised cluster evaluation of a parenting programme to address child development and maternal wellbeing in Uganda
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background The first 24 months of a child's life are now recognised to be crucial for later growth and development. We evaluated a community-based parenting programme targeting relevant practices in northern, rural Uganda. Methods A randomised cluster design, with baseline and endline measurements, was used to evaluate a parenting programme in Lira, Uganda. Intervention caregivers of children aged 12–36 months attended 12 bimonthly group sessions, led by a peer educator, which focused on hygiene, nutrition, psychosocial stimulation, and maternal care. The main outcome variable was Bayley III cognitive and receptive language development. Secondary outcomes included dietary diversity, HOME stimulation, and maternal depressive symptoms and perceived spousal support. Ethics approval was received from Mbarara and McGill Universities. This trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01906606. Findings A total of 319 mother–child dyads were enrolled across 12 clusters; 291 dyads (91·2%, 160 intervention and 131 control) completed the parenting programme and endline assessment. At endline, children of intervention parents compared with controls had significantly higher mean Bayley cognitive scores (58·9 vs 55·7, d =0·35, 95% CI 0·11–0·58) and higher receptive language scores (23·9 vs 22·4, d =0·23, 0·00–0·46). The intervention also had significant effects on improving parenting practices including HOME scores (30·9 vs 26·5, d =1·08, 95% CI 0·83 to 1·33), dietary diversity (3·47 vs 3·03, d =0·52, 0·29 to 0·76), reducing maternal depressive symptoms (15·3 vs 18·6, d =–0·29, −0·52 to −0·05), and improving perceived positive support from spouses (5·2 vs 4·5, d =0·26, 0·01 to 0·51). Interpretation Parenting programmes can improve child development and maternal wellbeing in rural settings with low and middle income. Funding Plan Uganda.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".