Title

A Randomised Controlled Trial Evaluation of Bookstart+: A Book Gifting Intervention for Two-Year-Old Children

Research Team

Dr Liam O’Hare (PI) and Professor Paul Connolly

Time Scale

March 2010 - July 2010

Funder

Booktrust

Aims and Objectives

A rigorous and independent evaluation of the effectiveness of the Bookstart+ book-gifting intervention as delivered in Northern Ireland.

Methodology

The evaluation took the form of a randomised controlled trial involving 462 families (with a two-year-old child) from the client lists of 146 health visitors in four geographical areas of the north east of Northern Ireland. Each health visitor had two control families and two intervention families. Overall, this resulted in 235 intervention families and 227 control families being approached by their health visitor to take part in the trial.

All of the pre-test data collection was conducted by the health visitors. Post-test data collection was carried out by post and then a follow up phone call by a member of the research team. In both cases, data collection involved a self-complete questionnaire. Alongside data on the main outcomes, parents in the intervention group were also asked questions about their use of the Bookstart+ packs at post-test.

The main focus for the analysis was the effects of the programme as a whole. However, and in addition, further exploratory analysis was conducted to test whether there was any evidence to suggest that the intervention may be more effective for those families: from differing socio-economic backgrounds; with differing levels of educational attainment; with differing numbers of other children in the household; and living in different geographic areas.

Outputs

The final report is available on the CEE website via the following link: Main Report

This is one of several evaluation studies conducted by the Centre for Effective Education. Please see also Booktime Northern Ireland and Booktime England. For further information please contact Dr Liam O'Hare.