An Intervention to Promote Positive Peer Relationships and Reduce Prejudice and Bias in Childhood
An Intervention to Promote Positive Peer Relationships and Reduce Prejudice and Bias in Childhood
The goal of this clinical trial is to test the beneficial impacts of a web based intervention program called Developing Inclusive Youth for children in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. The main questions it aims to answer are:
Student participants will take 15-20 minutes to use a Chrome notebook and headphones to access the online tool and the teacher will then lead a classroom discussion lasting 25-30 minutes. The intervention program will occur once a week for eight weeks.
The student outcome measures, given at pretest and posttest, are also assessed with Chrome notebooks while children are sitting at their desks in the classroom. The outcome measures take 25-30 minutes. Researchers will compare children in the intervention classes to children in other classes of the same grade at their school to see if the tool promotes positive peer relationships and reduces prejudice and bias.
Teacher participants will take a 25-minute online pretest and posttest survey in their classroom to assess their theories of prejudice, their awareness of their students' intergroup friendships, comfort with discussing peer social inclusion and exclusion in class, and their awareness of student experiences of exclusion.
A within school randomized control trial intervention design will be implemented to promote intergroup relationships and reduce prejudice in childhood for children between 7 and 12 years of age, enrolled in grades 3, 4, and 5 in U.S. elementary public schools. The intervention students watch an online tool for 15 minutes accompanied by a 30-minute teacher-led classroom discussion. Students in the control condition will be business as usual. There will be 720 students and 36 teachers, reflecting an ethnically diverse population. The outcome measures assess school belonging, peer and teacher classroom support, trait attributions of diverse peers, social evaluations about intergroup exclusion as well as the likelihood of exclusion, and math and science competency beliefs of diverse peers. All teachers participate in a 2-hour training session prior to the start of the school semester. All participating students have active parental consent. All teachers take a survey about their theories of prejudice, awareness of student experiences with exclusion, and strategies for talking about peer conflict in the classroom prior to the beginning of the program and provide their assent. There is high fidelity of the program due to the delivery of the information which is online. There are many steps in place to ensure fidelity of the teacher component which involves leading the classroom discussion. Multi-level analyses will be employed to determine whether the students in the intervention improve in their desire for intergroup friendships and experiences of classroom support relative to the students in the control condition. Novel data will be collected regarding intergroup attitudes held by children across a range of target groups and grade levels. The information from this project is expected to improve peer relationships due to the more positive classroom environment and an increase of social inclusion among peers. All children are expected to benefit by their participation in the program with a goal of improving academic engagement and healthy child development.
For Child Participants
Inclusion Criteria:
For Teacher Participants:
Exclusion Criteria: