Inclusive Early Childhood Education and Care Impact Evaluation, 2020: Baseline Survey (Serbia)

Abstract

The Inclusive Early Childhood Education and Care Impact Evaluation will evaluate the virtual parenting skills workshops in Serbia for parents of children aged 2-6. The study’s goal is 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 are reflected in parent-reported child outcomes. The evaluation uses a randomized control trial (RCT) to test the impact of virtual parenting workshops on parenting behaviors and early childhood development. The study will also test whether or not father participation in parental training improves fathers’ behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge to promote early childhood development, and to what extent those changes are reflected in parent-reported child outcomes.

The program is delivered by preschool teachers who works 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 will span 8 weeks, and cover topics of play, parentings stimulation, family environment and father involvement among others.

The sampling frame is the universe of families enrolled in the program in the target municipalities where this program is 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 are placed on a waitlist and will be prioritized to receive the workshops in the future after the evaluation is completed.

The evaluation will have 1434 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. The first phase started enrollment in October 2020 and the second phase started in February 2021. Endline data collection will be in August 2021 for both phases.