Preferences, Information, and Parental Choice Behavior in Public School Choice

The incentives and outcomes generated by public school choice depend to a large degree on parents' choice behavior. There is growing empirical evidence that low-income parents place lower weights on academics when choosing schools, but there is little evidence as to why. We use a field experiment in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public School district (CMS) to examine the degree to which information costs impact parental choices and their revealed preferences for academic achievement. We provided simplified information sheets on school average test scores or test scores coupled with estimated odds of admission to students in randomly selected schools along with their CMS school choice forms. We find that receiving simplified information leads to a significant increase in the average test score of the school chosen. This increase is equivalent to a doubling in the implicit preference for academic performance in a random utility model of school choice. Receiving information on odds of admission further increases the effect of simplified test score information on preferences for test scores among low-income families, but dampens the effect among higher-income families. Using within-family changes in choice behavior, we provide evidence that the estimated impact of simplified information is more consistent with lowered information costs than with suggestion or saliency.

Supporting siblings of children with a special educational need or disability : an evaluation of Sibs Talk, a one‐to‐one intervention delivered by staff in mainstream schools

A group often overlooked for specific supports in schools are siblings of children with a disability, special educational needs or a serious long‐term condition (SEND). In this article we review the current sibling research and identify a lack of literature on interventions, particularly within a school context. We then present a description of Sibs Talk, an example of a new school‐based intervention to support siblings. Sibs Talk is a ten‐session, one‐to‐one intervention approach for schools to complete with Key Stage 2 children who have a brother or sister with SEND. Finally, we present an initial evaluation of the effectiveness of Sibs Talk, using a pre and post evaluation format with a sample of 55 children from 11 schools. The data presented in this evaluation indicate that Sibs Talk may have contributed to positive outcomes for participating children

Planning ahead with children with life-limiting conditions and their families : development, implementation and evaluation of ‘My Choices’

Background: The United Kingdom has led the world in the development of children’s palliative care. Over the past two decades, the illness trajectories of children with life-limiting conditions have extended with new treatments and better home-based care. Future planning is a critically under-researched aspect of children’s palliative care globally. This paper describes the development, implementation and evaluation of innovative child and parent-held palliative care planning resources. The resources were designed to facilitate parent and child thinking and engagement in future planning, and to determine care preferences and preferred locations of care for children with life-limiting conditions from diagnosis onwards. These resources fill a significant gap in palliative care planning before the end-of-life phase. Methods: Drawing on contemporaneous research on producing evidence-based children’s health information, we collaborated with leading children’s not-for-profit organisations, parents, children, and professionals. A set of resources (My Choices booklets) were developed for parents and children and evaluated using interviews (parents, children, professionals) and questionnaires (professionals) and an open web-based consultation. Results: Parents and children responded in three ways: Some used the booklets to produce detailed written plans with clear outcomes and ideas about how best to achieve desired outcomes. Others preferred to use the booklet to help them think about potential options. Remaining parents found it difficult to think about the future and felt there was no point because they perceived there to be no suitable local services. Professionals varied in confidence in their ability to engage with families to plan ahead and identified many challenges that prevented them from doing so. Few families shared their plans with professionals. Parents and children have far stronger preferences for home-care than professionals. Conclusion: The My Choices booklets were revised in light of findings, have been endorsed by Together for Short Lives, and are free to download in English and Welsh for use by parents and young people globally. More work needs to be done to support families who are not yet receptive to planning ahead. Professionals would benefit from more training in person-centred approaches to future planning and additional communications skills to increase confidence and ability to engage with families to deliver sensitive palliative care planning

Siblings of children with life-limiting conditions : psychological adjustment and sibling relationships

Background This study explored psychological adjustment and sibling relationships of siblings of children with life-limiting conditions (LLCs), expanding on previous research by defining LLCs using a systematic classification of these conditions. Methods Thirty-nine siblings participated, aged 3–16 years. Parents completed measures of siblings' emotional and behavioural difficulties, quality of life, sibling relationships and impact on families and siblings. Sibling and family adjustment and relationships were compared with population norms, where available, and to a matched comparison group of siblings of children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), as a comparable ‘high risk’ group. Results LLC siblings presented significantly higher levels of emotional and behavioural difficulties, and lower quality of life than population norms. Their difficulties were at levels comparable to siblings of children with ASD. A wider impact on the family was confirmed. Family socio-economic position, time since diagnosis, employment and accessing hospice care were factors associated with better psychological adjustment. Conclusions Using a systematic classification of LLCs, the study supported earlier findings of increased levels of psychological difficulties in siblings of children with a LLC. The evidence is (i) highlighting the need to provide support to these siblings and their families, and (ii) that intervention approaches could be drawn from the ASD field

Paediatric palliative care : development and pilot study of a ‘Directory’ of life-limiting conditions

Background: Children’s palliative care services are developing. Rational service development requires sound epidemiological data that are difficult to obtain owing to ambiguity in the definitions both of the population who needs palliative care and of palliative care itself. Existing definitions are of trajectory archetypes. The aim of this study was to develop and pilot a directory of the commonest specific diagnoses that map on to those archetypes. Methods: The diagnoses of patients under the care of five children hospices and a tertiary specialist palliative medicine service in the UK were recorded. Duplicates and diagnoses that were not life-limiting conditions according to the ACT/RCPCH criteria or were not primary were removed. The resulting Directory of life-limiting conditions was piloted by analysing Death Certificate data of children in Wales between 2002 and 2007. Results: 1590 diagnoses from children’s hospices and 105 from specialist palliative medicine were combined. After removals there were 376 diagnostic label. All ICD10 chapter headings were represented by at least one condition. The pilot study showed that 569 (54%) deaths in Wales were caused by LLC. Only four LLC resulted in ten or more deaths. Among deaths from LLC, the ten commonest diagnoses accounted for 32%, while the 136 diagnoses that caused one or two deaths accounted for 25%. The majority occurred from a small number of life-limiting conditions. Conclusion: The Directory is a practical tool for identifying most life-limiting conditions using ICD10 codes that facilitates extraction and analysis of data from existing sources in respect of life-limiting conditions in children such as death certificate data, offering the potential for rapid and precise studies in paediatric palliative care

Social support, coping, and positive perceptions as potential protective factors for the well-being of mothers of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Objectives: Behavioral and emotional problems exhibited by children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have been identified as significant stressors for family members in both cross-sectional and longitudinal research. However, there is variability in the extent to which family members are affected by behavioral and emotional problems. In the present study, we explored whether perceived social support, positive perceptions, or coping style explain some of this variability and specifically whether these three variables function as protective factors. Methods: One hundred and thirty-eight mothers of children aged between four and 18 years old with IDD participated in a cross-sectional survey. Results: Using moderated multiple regression models, we found consistent evidence that perceived social support functioned as a protective factor — affecting the relationship between child behavioral and emotional problems and maternal depression, life satisfaction, and positive affect. There was no evidence that coping and positive perceptions acted as a protective factors. Conclusion: Building social support through parental interventions, especially in families of children with behavioral and emotional problems, may result in improved well-being for mothers of children with IDD

Examining heterogeneity of education intervention effects using quantile mixed models: a re-analysis of a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a fluency-based mathematics intervention

Traditionally, cluster randomized controlled trials are analyzed with the average intervention effect of interest. However, in populations that contain higher degrees of heterogeneity or variation may differ across different values of a covariate, which may not be optimal. Within education and social science contexts, exploring the variation in magnitude of treatment effect at different points in the population can indicate where the intervention is most effective rather than assuming an average effect. Data from [Owen, K.L., et al., 2021. Implementation support improves outcomes of a fluency-based mathematics strategy: A cluster-randomized controlled trial. Journal of research on educational effectiveness, 14 (3), 523–542.] were reanalyzed using three modeling approaches: conditional mean-modeling reporting the average treatment effect using linear mixed models, and two quantile regression-based methods. Quantile regressions report the quantile treatment effects at different percentiles: 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th. For the Quantile approaches, a significant intervention effect in the median to upper quantiles was found and linear quantile mixed model showed improved fit over the other approaches. An improved picture of intervention effects may be apparent using quantile regression methods when analyzing cluster randomized trials that have heterogeneous error variance. In particular, the linear quantile mixed model shows improved model fit allowing a multilevel framework to include random effects. There is considerable scope to extend this framework to incorporate more complex RCT designs

Parental relationship satisfaction in families of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) : a multilevel analysis

Couples raising a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) face many challenges. Research so far has focused on whether these couples are more or less likely to separate or divorce compared to other couples whose children do not have ASD. While this is important, we argue that the quality of the couple relationship is equally- if not more- important to research. Systematic evidence from typical development has shown that the quality of the couple’s relationship is related to parenting and also to long-term behavioral and emotional outcomes of children. With this study, we wanted to explore whether mothers and fathers of children with ASD are satisfied with their relationship, and what individual or family-level factors are related to the couple’s relationship satisfaction levels. Our data from 146 couples suggested that mothers and fathers agree on how satisfied they are with their relationship, and that relationship satisfaction appears to be related to parents’ depressive symptoms and the behavior problems of their child with ASD. The higher the depression levels, the lower the parent reported on the dependent variable relationship satisfaction, for both mothers and fathers. Also, as behavior problems increased, relationship satisfaction decreased. Interestingly, relationship satisfaction was not related to the behavior problems of a sibling, the number of children in the household, or the socioeconomic position of families (SEP). Families include interconnected systems whereby an individual’s well-being and behavior can have an impact (positive or negative) on other family dyads such as the couple relationship