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The problem
Intervention: Nurture Groups: short-term, school-based intervention modelled on attachment theory to strengthen children's attachments and develop their social and emotional skills
Who it was tested with: Children aged 5–6 years in primary schools in Northern Ireland; included children in care and others with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.
Children or communities are compared with a group that did not receive the intervention, or followed over years. This is the design that best separates what the intervention did from everything else that changed.
"The evaluation used a non-random control group design, involving a total sample of 384 children, aged 5–6 years, from 30 Nurture Group schools and a further 14 matched schools with no Nurture Group provision in Northern Ireland." This is a quasi-experimental design with a matched comparison group, making it experimental in tier, though the non-random allocation and matching method may introduce bias.
Non-random control group design limits causal inference. The document does not specify effect sizes for individual outcomes or provide detail on the characteristics that moderated effectiveness.
Across countries and designs
1 study · 1 country
