Students Education Training in Emotional Connection

February 13, 2023 updated by: Martha G Welch, Columbia University

The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of different educational modules in training graduate students from Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus and from the Columbia School of Social Work to assess the emotional connection of mother/child dyads with accuracy.

The investigators hypothesize that after completing the educational module involving recorded dyad interactions, subjects will achieve coding reliability with the PI.

Study Overview

Detailed Description

The purpose of this study is to develop and test educational modules designed to instruct students how to assess the quality and strength of mother-child relationships. The approach will use constructs of Emotional Connection that were used in development of an investigational observation-based screening instrument, the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS). The WECS allows healthcare providers to rate the emotional connection of a mother-child relationship in just a few minutes of observed face-to face interaction, and shows preliminary predictive properties when performed in the first year of life.

Administration of the WECS involves watching recorded interactions of a child sitting face-to-face on the mother's lap, and scoring the interaction on sliding scales per 4 domains. During the WECS development, the Nurture Science Program of Columbia University Irving Medical Center created and coded hours of parent-child interaction videos. These videos will be used to assess and train the students (subjects) on rating mother/child dyads around emotional connection. Subjects will rate the quality of mother-child relationships in video training sets after completing one of two educational modules: A) a lecture-style webinar describing evidence base and instructions on how to score the WECS B) a guide written in Clear Explicit Translatable Language (CETL). Training set results of students in these groups will be compared to results of students who received no prior training. Training set results will be analyzed for the reliability statistic between student scores and key scores established by writer of the scale and PI. Subjects will then spend 3 months without further training in emotional connection or practice coding WECS. Subjects will then rate the quality of mother-child relationships for videos of dyads they hadn't previously seen. The main outcome of this study is the comparison of reliability statistics and maintenance between students who completed different educational modules.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Actual)

54

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

    • New York
      • New York, New York, United States, 10032
        • Columbia University Medical Center

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

20 years to 40 years (Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

N/A

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Graduate students from the Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus and from the Columbia School of Social Work

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • graduate students from the Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus and from the Columbia School of Social Work

Exclusion Criteria:

  • refusal to participate

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Intra-Class Correlations of Students' Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) Scores
Time Frame: 2018 - 2019

The Welch Emotional Connection Scale (WECS) is an investigational developmental screening tool, developed to rate the quality of the emotional connection that formed between mother and child. The scale is administered in 2-3 minutes by observing a mother and child interact, and requires the rater to critically assess 4 sub-domains of emotional connection.

The WECS is scored on intervals of 0.25, with a minimum of 1 (little or no connection) and maximum of 3 (high connection). High connection is considered optimal for child development, and low connection is considered a risk in child development.

Separately from these scores, the final portion of the screen determines, "Is the dyad emotionally connected?" and is scored with "No" or "Yes." Observing these scores could help determine if the educational module is successful in training students to assess the emotional connection.

2018 - 2019

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

September 14, 2018

Primary Completion (Actual)

November 30, 2018

Study Completion (Actual)

November 30, 2018

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 19, 2018

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 20, 2018

First Posted (Actual)

September 21, 2018

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 15, 2023

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 13, 2023

Last Verified

February 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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