METHODS

1
Effects of the Getting Ready Intervention on
Childrens Interpersonal Competencies The
Moderating Role of Child and Family Risk Kathryn
E. Woods, Susan M. Sheridan, Allison Q. Osborn,
Brandy L. Clarke, Kevin A. Kupzyk
Figure 1. DECA Initiative
Figure 2. DECA Attachment

• Interpersonal Competence
• A childs early years are critical to his or her
  social-emotional development (Zeanah, Stafford,
  Nagle, Rice,
• 2005).
• Children with a strong sense of social-emotional
  competence engage more with peers and teachers,
• participate in classroom activities, enjoy
  learning, and are more likely to experience a
  positive transition
• from preschool to kindergarten (Raver
  Knitzer, 2002) and future academic achievement
  (Hemmeter,
• Ostrosky, Fox, 2006).
• Many young children, particularly those living in
  poverty, enter school without the interpersonal
  competence
• necessary to succeed in a formal educational
  setting (Raver Knitzer, 2002 Zill, Moore,
  Smith, Stief,
• Coiro, 1991).
• Few studies have examined the development of
  social-emotional skills among Spanish speaking
  students
• (Rumberger Tran, 2006) however
  social-emotional development may be impaired when
  children have
• difficulty communicating and understanding peers
  and teachers.
• Young children with disabilities may also
  struggle to understand their social environment
  and often have
• difficulty developing social relationships,
  being accepted by peers, interpreting social
  cues, learning and
• demonstrating social competencies and adapting
  to new environments (Most, Al-Yagon, Tur-Kaspa,
  Margalit,
• 2000).
• Early intervention services may assist children
  at risk in developing their social-emotional
  competence and
• may be especially influential when focused on
  strengthening home environments and parent-child
  

• Measures
• Teachers rated student interpersonal competence
  at baseline and follow-up using
• Devereaux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA
  LeBuffe Naglieri, 1999) attachment and
  initiative
• subscales
• Attachment (8 items) assesses the mutual, strong,
  long-lasting relationship between a child and
• significant adults (e.g., parents, teachers)
• Initiative (12 items) assesses the childs
  ability to think and act independently
• Teachers rated child behavior using a 5-point
  Likert scale (0 never 4 very frequently)
• T scores with M 50, SD 10
• Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation short
  form (SCBE-30 LaFreniere Dumas, 1996) Social
• Competence and Anxiety Withdrawal subscales.
• Social Competency (10 items) assesses positive
  qualities of a childs adaptation
• Anxiety-withdrawal (10 items) consists of items
  describing depressed, isolated, and overly
  dependent
• behavior
• Items are rated on a 6-point Likert scale (1
  never, 6 always)
• Raw scores on a scale of 1 (low) to 6 (high)
• Moderators
• Child risk consisted of language (i.e., speaking
  a language other than English) and disability
  status (i.e., parent

Figure 3. SCBE Anxiety Withdrawal
Figure 4. SCBE Social Competence

•  Research Question 1
• Outcomes of the multilevel analyses assessing the
  impact of the Getting Ready intervention on child
  
• interpersonal competence are presented in Table
  1 and Figures 1 through 4.
• The Getting Ready treatment group experienced
  significantly greater gains over time in
  attachment behaviors
• compared to controls as measured by the DECA ?
  0.29, t(160) 2.88, p lt .05, d 0.75.
• Relative to controls, the treatment group had
  significantly different rates of change in
  initiative ?0.19,
• t(156) 2.12, p lt .05, d .56.
• A greater reduction in anxiety/withdrawal
  behaviors over time as measured on the SCBE-30 ?
  -0.02,
• t(160) -2.91, p lt .05, d -.74 was observed
  for the treatment group compared to controls.
• Research Question 2
• A summary table describing the effect of child
  language and disability status as moderators on
  child
• interpersonal competencies is presented in
  Table 2.
• Language status moderated the effectiveness of
  the Getting Ready intervention on all
  interpersonal outcomes
• (i.e., DECA Initiative and Attachment SCBE
  Anxiety-Withdrawal and Social Competency). The
  Getting
• Ready intervention was more effective for
  children who did not speak English relative to
  those who did, and
• relative to the control group.
• Disability status moderated effectiveness of the
  Getting Ready intervention on two outcomes (i.e.,
  DECA
• Initiative and SCBE Social Competency). The
  Getting Ready was significantly more effective
  for children
• with disabilities than those without
  disabilities, and then the control condition.

• Getting Ready Intervention
• The Getting Ready intervention is an ecological,
  relationship-based approach to school readiness
  for families
• with children from birth to 5 years of age who
  are of low income and participating in home- and
  center-
• based early education programs.
• A primary emphasis of the Getting Ready
  intervention is promoting parent engagement via
  parental warmth
• and sensitivity, support for a childs emerging
  autonomy, and active participation in learning.
• Getting Ready integrates triadic
  (parentchildprofessional McCollum Yates,
  1994) and collaborative
• (familyschool) strategies (Sheridan
  Kratochwill, 2008) to promote parentchild and
  parentprofessional
• partnerships.
• Triadic strategies prompt warm, supportive
  parentchild interactions affirm parents
  competence focus
• parents attention on child development or
  skills provide developmental information and
  model and/or
• suggest parent actions that can support child
  learning.
• Collaborative strategies involve planning between
  parents and teachers to identify child strengths,
  
• determine important socialemotional learning
  goals, assess current levels of child
  functioning,
• brainstorm plans to support a childs
  socialemotional growth, and monitor child
  progress.
• Getting Ready has been found to promote
  interpersonal competence for young children
  (Sheridan et al., in
• press) however, the degree to which certain
  child and family risk factors moderate the
  effects needs to be
• investigated.

• ANALYSIS
•  Multilevel modeling (Snijders Bosker, 1999)
  was used to test growth curves among dependent
  variables
• with a .05.
• Multilevel models included fixed effects for
  treatment group, the linear effect of time, and
  the group by time
• interaction for all variables in the set.
• Analyses were conducted with SAS PROC MIXED
  using residual maximum likelihood (REML) with
• Kenward-Roger degrees of freedom, to produces
  unbiased estimating equations for the variance
  parameters
• and evaluate the fixed effects.
• The study design is a 4-level complex sampling
  design (repeated observations level 1 nested
  within each
• child level 2, children nested within
  teachers or classrooms level 3, and classrooms
  nested within schools
• or programs level 4 no significant random
  effects for school or teacher were observed.
• Since random assignment to treatment condition
  occurred at the teacher/classroom level, random
  effects at
• the teacher and school levels were constrained
  to a minimal positive value (0.01) for model
  parsimony.
• Time was centered to reflect the number of
  months since randomization.
• Missing data due primarily to planned
  missingness caused by the cohort nature of the
  study design was
• accounted for by the use of FIML in the growth
  curve modeling framework in SAS PROC MIXED, which
  
• allows data from incomplete cases to be
  included in the analysis.
• Tests of moderation were carried out by adding
  each moderator as a time X group X moderator
  effect,
• including the main effect of the moderator and
  each two-way interaction. The three-way
  interaction term

Table 3

• DISCUSSION
• This study revealed significant differences
  between treatment
• and control participants in the rate of change
  over time for
• certain interpersonal competencies (i.e.,
  attachment, initiative,
• anxiety withdrawal).
• Getting Ready was more effective at improving
  outcomes for
• non-English speaking than English-speaking
  children across all
• interpersonal outcomes.

Child Language Disability Status
DECA Initiative X X
DECA Attachment X
SCBE Anxiety Withdrawal X
SCBE Social Competence X X

•  PURPOSE OF STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• The purpose of this study was to examine the
  moderating effects of child and family risk
  factors on the
• Getting Ready intervention and interpersonal
  outcomes for young children living in poverty.
• To what extent does the Getting Ready
  intervention improve preschool students'
  interpersonal
• competence relative to a control group?
• To what extent do child and family risk factors
  moderate the effects of the Getting Ready
  intervention on
• preschool students' interpersonal competence?

.

• Children with identified disabilities in the
  treatment group improved at a much higher rate
  than children
• without a disability, and children in the
  control group, on DECA Initiative and SCBE Social
  Competence
• outcomes.
• The direct effects of the Getting Ready
  intervention on the SCBE Social Competence scale
  appear to have
• been masked by the language spoken by the child
  and the childs disability status. For this
  variable, there is a
• significant interaction between the
  intervention and child language, and between the
  intervention and
• disability status. Intervention effects are
  noted only when these child factors are taken
  into account.
• There were also some significant interactions
  observed with family risk as a moderator.
  However, no clear
• patterns were evident.

METHODS
RESULTS
Table 2
Table 1 Participant Characteristics at Baseline

Effect Estimate SE DF t p-value ES
DECA Initiative
Intercept (C) 50.83 0.98 218.62 51.90 lt0.01
Condition (?E-C) -1.50 1.32 213.83 -1.13 0.26
Time (C) 0.59 0.07 167.85 8.81 lt0.01
Cond. X Time (?E-C) 0.19 0.09 156.41 2.12 0.04 0.56
DECA Attachment
Intercept (C) 52.67 1.01 219.99 51.98 lt0.01
Condition (?E-C) -1.99 1.37 214.53 -1.46 0.15
Time (C) 0.26 0.08 172.80 3.35 lt0.01
Cond. X Time (?E-C) 0.29 0.10 160.30 2.88 0.00 0.75
SCBE Anxiety Withdrawal SCBE Anxiety Withdrawal
Intercept (C) 1.94 0.07 217.06 26.29 lt0.01
Condition (?E-C) 0.08 0.10 211.35 0.77 0.44
Time (C) -0.01 0.01 174.13 -1.21 0.23
Cond. X Time (?E-C) -0.02 0.01 160.86 -2.91 lt0.01 -0.74
SCBE Social Competence SCBE Social Competence
Intercept (C) 3.65 0.09 219.80 39.72 lt0.01
Condition (?E-C) -0.10 0.12 213.94 -0.78 0.44
Time (C) 0.06 0.01 166.28 9.91 lt0.01
Cond. X Time (?E-C) 0.00 0.01 152.36 0.58 0.57 0.17
p lt .05 p lt .01
C Control Group E Experimental Group C Control Group E Experimental Group C Control Group E Experimental Group C Control Group E Experimental Group C Control Group E Experimental Group C Control Group E Experimental Group C Control Group E Experimental Group
Children (n220) Parents (n214) Teachers (n29)
Mean Age M43.06 months (SD3.55 months) M29.35 years (SD7.71 years) M36.05 years (SD 11 years)
Gender 51 Male 95 Female 100 Female
Ethnicity 30 White 25 Hispanic/Latino 18 African-American 25 Other 47 White 26 Hispanic/Latino 16 African-American 11 Other 91 White 9 Hispanic/Latino
Language 92 English 8 Other
Disability 88 no disability 12 identified disability 88 no disability 12 identified disability
Public assistance 98 public assistance 2 no public assistance
Employment status 54 employed 46 unemployed
Age at childs birth 36 under 18 years old 64 over 18 years old
Education 23 less than high school 77 high school diploma or more 23 less than high school 77 high school diploma or more
Adults in household 40 single parents 60 two adults in home 40 single parents 60 two adults in home
Note. Six parents did not provide demographic information at the baseline measurement. Note. Six parents did not provide demographic information at the baseline measurement. Note. Six parents did not provide demographic information at the baseline measurement. Note. Six parents did not provide demographic information at the baseline measurement.

• LIMITATIONS
• Child outcomes were assessed via teacher report
  only and multiple reports of child outcomes
  across home
• and preschool settings are needed to gauge
  effects of the intervention objectively across
  contexts.
• The treatment group showed significantly higher
  levels of risk than the control group, which may
  have
• presented problems in estimating the
  possibility of family risk as a moderator of the
  intervention effects.
• There is a need to investigate family risk more
  extensively to understand its effects in the
  context of the
• Getting Ready intervention.
• Lack of follow-up data on children are available
  as they transitioned to kindergarten.
• IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
• This study illustrates the importance of an
  ecological, relationship-based approach to early
  intervention for
• children who enter school with higher risk,
  including children in low socioeconomic
  conditions who speak a
• language other than English and children with
  disabilities.
• Variables that potentially mediate intervention
  effects on child outcomes need to be explored.
• Teacher variables that potentially moderate
  intervention effects, such as stress, beliefs
  regarding parental
• roles, and agency support, need to be explored.
• The long-term effects of the Getting Ready
  intervention on child interpersonal competencies
  beyond the
• preschool period also need to be examined.

The research was supported by a grant awarded to
Drs. Susan Sheridan and Carolyn Pope Edwards by
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, Administration for Children and
Families, and Office of the Assistant Secretary
for Planning and Evaluation and by of Education
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative
Services (Grant 1R01H0043613the U.S. Department
5).