Project: knowledge about the long-term implications of pre-term birth
The population of children born preterm face an elevated risk of neurological impairment, special educational needs and poorer academic attainment compared to children born full term.
Project focus
An e-learning resource has been trailed and evaluated, demonstrating improvements in teachers’ knowledge of the implications of preterm birth and their confidence in supporting the learning of children born preterm. However, this resource has not yet been trailed with educational psychologists.
This study is a two-group pre- and post-intervention design:
- All participants will be invited to complete the pre-intervention questionnaire to assess knowledge of outcomes of prematurity.
- Following this, participants will be randomly assigned to the control or experimental group. The experimental group will receive a link to the e-learning resource.
- Both groups will be required to complete the post-intervention questionnaire.
- Once completed, participants within the control group will receive a link to the resource.
Two focus groups will be conducted with a group of participants to gather feedback on the e-learning resource and to determine if any alterations need to be made for training educational psychologists in the future.
How you can participate
Follow this link to the pre-intervention survey. You will be invited to complete the short anonymous questionnaire about Preterm birth and your normal psychoeducational assessment. The survey takes 5 minutes to complete. Following this, you will be randomly assigned to either a control or intervention/experimental group.
Researcher
Aisling Donnelly (Trainee Educational, Child and Adolescent Psychologist at Queen’s University, Belfast).
Supervisor: Anthea Percy (Lecturer in Educational Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast).
Please contact Aisling or my thesis supervisor Anthea for further information or if you have any concerns.
Ethical approval has been granted by Queen’s University ethics committee.
Research questions
- What is the level of knowledge among EPs (trainees, assistants and qualified) regarding the specific needs of children born preterm as measured by the Preterm Birth-Knowledge Scale (PB-KS)?
- How do EPs and EP-related professionals assess, and support children born preterm within educational settings?
- How much does the PRISM e-learning resource influence EPs/EP-related professionals’ knowledge and practice of children born preterm?
- What further training or resources do EPs/EP-related professionals’ who have used the e-learning resource believe would benefit their practice when assessing and supporting children born preterm.
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