Inclusive Early Childhood Education and Care Impact Evaluation 2021 - Endline Survey

The Inclusive Early Childhood Education and Care Impact Evaluation evaluated the virtual parenting skills workshops in Serbia for parents of children aged 2-6. The study’s goal was to examine the extent to which parenting workshops and communications improve parenting behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge to promote early childhood development, and to assess, to what extent, those changes were reflected in parent-reported child outcomes. The evaluation used a randomized control trial (RCT) to test the impact of virtual parenting workshops on parenting behaviors and early childhood development. The study also tested whether or not father participation in parental training improved fathers’ behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge to promote early childhood development, and to what extent those changes were reflected in parent-reported child outcomes. The program was delivered by preschool teachers who work at the local preschool institutions. The program was adapted from face-to-face meetings to virtual meeting group discussions, SMS messages, audio messages, calls, and a guide and complementary materials to have at home. The workshops spanned 8 weeks, and covered topics of play, parentings stimulation, family environment and father involvement among others. The sampling frame was the universe of families enrolled in the program in the target municipalities where this program was being implemented. From this universe we randomly assigned families in three groups: Treatment 1 (T1): Parenting virtual workshops for main caregiver (T1), Parenting virtual workshops for female and male caregiver (T2) and control groups who were placed on a waitlist and were prioritized to receive the workshops after endline data was collected. The evaluation included 1,431 families in total in a two-phase delivery. The first phase started the implementation in December 2020 and the second phase started the program in March 2021. Baseline data was collected online through an enrollment form that families filled out to participate in the program (this data can be found here https://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/6197 ). The first phase started enrollment in October 2020 and the second phase started in February 2021.

Endline data was collected for both phases via phone interview from August through October 2021. The instrument measured parental practices, parental stress, parental beliefs and attitudes, and child development as reported by the caregiver.