Developing Inclusive Youth: Promoting Intergroup Friendships and Inclusive Classrooms in Childhood (DIY)

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:

• Does the Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY) program, which is a web-based curriculum tool with a teacher-led classroom discussion, reduce prejudicial attitudes and biases as well as increase intergroup friendships for a sample of 8 -11 year old children enrolled in 3rd , 4th, and 5th grade U.S. classrooms?
• Does the Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY) program lead to grade-related, gender-related and ethnic-related differences regarding reducing prejudicial attitudes and increasing intergroup friendships?
• Does the Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY) program change teacher attitudes regarding the malleability of prejudice, the importance of intergroup friendships, and comfort levels with discussing social inclusion and exclusion experiences in the classroom?

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.

Study Overview

• Status: Enrolling by invitation
• Conditions: Peer Group; Social Exclusion; Prejudice, Racial; Prejudice; Sexism
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY)

Detailed Description

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.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 720
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Maryland
    • College Park, Maryland, United States, 20742
      • University of Maryland

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 5 years to 10 years (Child)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

For Child Participants

Inclusion Criteria:

• children with parental consent in grades 3, 4, or 5 at participating schools
• be between the ages of 7 and 12 years
• children who need assistance sitting at their desk or reading the text can participate provided that an adult mentor is assigned to them to assist with the protocol

For Teacher Participants:

• teachers of students in grades 3, 4, and 5 at participating schools and who provide assent
• no age limits for teacher participation

Exclusion Criteria:

• school has identified the student as unable to participate due to disability status.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Intervention: DIY Tool Classrooms; Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY) classrooms complete a pretest and posttest survey in addition to completing 8 scenarios using the DIY online tool and a class discussion for each scenario.	Behavioral: Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY); Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY) is a web-based curriculum tool that serves as the intervention program. The animated and narrated tool displays eight peer social exclusion scenarios in a range of familiar everyday social contexts (such as the playground and school). Children enter their responses while watching the scenarios. Responses include making decisions about inclusion and exclusion, evaluating the actions as okay or not okay, attributing feelings to includers, excluders, and excluded characters, and selecting reasons that best match their justification for their decisions and evaluations. The program includes teacher-guided group discussions following use of the tool in which teachers facilitate discussions about children's interpretations of the scenarios, evaluations, reflections regarding their own experiences of exclusion, and solutions. Participants will view and discuss 8 scenarios and engage in a discussion for each one over the course of 8 weeks.; Other Names: Developing Inclusive Youth; DIY
No Intervention: Control: Business As Usual Classrooms; The control group follows a Business-As-Usual plan (no "alternative" program is implemented for the control group.) They complete a pretest and posttest in the same weeks as the experimental group.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in School Belonging Scale	The School Belonging Scale is an 8-item self-report measure consisting of a rating scale ranging from 1 (really not true) to 6 (really true). The average of all items creates a final score of perceived school belonging in which higher scores indicate higher levels of perceived school belonging. The original Psychological Sense of School Membership scale (PSSM) (Goodenow, 1999) measure has been found to have internal consistency reliability for both suburban (0.875) and urban (0.803) elementary school populations. We modified this measure for length. Pilot testing revealed that this new, shorter version was also found to have high internal reliability (0.714). The construct validity of the scale was also indicated through a significant relationship with teacher-ratings of student social standing (Goodenow, 1993).	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in Classroom Life Scale: Peer Personal Support Subscale Personal Support Subscale	This is a five-item measure including items about whether other students in my class care about me and other students in my class like me for who I am. The measure has been found to produce reliability figures of .92 (Van Ryzin, Gravely, & Roseth, 2009) and our modified version utilizing a 6-point response scale in place of the original 5-point scale found similar reliability scores (0.896). The rating scale ranged from 1 (really not true) to 6 (really true). The average of all items creates a score of perceived peer personal support in which higher scores indicate higher levels of perceived peer support. Performance on the Van Ryzin et al. (2009) scale has been demonstrated to have an independent positive effect on engagement in learning and has been validated by connections to academic engagement (Collie, Martin, Papworth, and Gins, 2016).	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in Classroom Life Scale: Teacher Personal Support Subscale	The degree to which students perceive their teachers as personally supportive will be assessed using this 4-item measure. Items include statements such as my teacher cares about me and my teacher likes me for who I am. This measure was also modified from the original rating scale to a 6-point rating scale which ranged from 1 (really not true) to 6 (really true). Van Ryzin et al. (2009) reported an internal consistency reliability of .91 and our pilot testing found similar internal consistency reliability, 0.893.	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in Trait Attributions for Gender, Race, & Ethnicity	An adaptation of the Child Occupations and Traits (COAT) scale (Liben & Bigler, 2002; 0.99) measures stereotypes regarding gender and race intergroup categories. Participants respond to three types of items (e.g., how smart or not smart; how hardworking or lazy; or friendly or mean) and this measure was also modified to utilize a 6 point rating scale. There are two sub-categories, gender and race. The questions probe the degree to which children assign traits to specific groups. The version we utilized contained 12 items, 6 about race and 6 about gender and pilot testing revealed that this version had a high internal reliability for the full scale (0.919), as well as for the gender and the race subcomponents (0.859 and 0.849 respectively).	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in High Status Occupation Expectations	This scale is adapted from Liben and Bigler (2002) who report a reliability of 0.97 for a scale that has a number of subscales. The scale probes participant perceptions of gendered toy preferences, of the inclusivity levels of different groups, of the math and science abilities of different groups, and of the likelihood of group members obtaining high status occupations. These subscales were created consistent with the literature on gender stereotypes (Berenbaum, Martin, & Ruble, 2015; Mulvey, Rizzo, & Killen, 2016). A 5 point rating scale ranging from 1 (none) to 5 (all) indicates the proportion of children within a hypothetical target group whom participants believe fit into a categorization. Pilot testing revealed 0.800 for the 5-item measure of inclusivity levels of different groups, 0.796 for the 5-item measure of math and science abilities of different groups, and 0.858 for the 5 item measure of the likelihood of group members obtaining high status occupations.	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in Reported Contact Scale	The diversity of friendships will be assessed using an adaptation of the Friendship Questionnaire (Bierman & McCauley, 1987). The original measure has been widely utilized to assess the quality and quantity of children's peer interactions and has proven to be reliable (ranges from .72 to .82). The adaptation consisted of adding the intergroup categories of gender and race/ethnicity. This adapted version was also found to be internally reliable (0.659). Using gender, racial, and ethnic background, we will record how often they play with outgroup peers to determine the proportion of cross-gender, cross-race, and cross-ethnic playmate interactions.	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in Desire for Intergroup Contact	This assessment consists of 5 separate items about how much the child wants to play with X, where X refers to pictures of girls, boys, and kids who are depicted as African American, European American, and Asian American). Response choices are provided on a 6 point rating scale ranging from 1 (really do not want to) to 6 (really want to). During pilot testing this measure was found to have a high internal consistency reliability (0.767). Using students' gender, ethnic, and racial background, we will record their desire to play with outgroup peers to determine the proportion of cross-gender, cross-race and cross-ethnic playmate preferences.	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in Personal Experiences with Exclusion	This assessments consists of 8 items about whether the child experiences exclusion in a school context. Response choices are provided on a 5 point Likert-type rating scale ranging from "Never" to "Always." This measure has been validated in previous research (Killen et al., 2022).	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in Evaluations of Exclusion in Intergroup and Same Group Contexts	This assessment consists of 2 items repeated 4 times to reflect different race and gender combinations for a total of 8 items. This measure is adapted from Cooley et al., 2019. The items ask participants to evaluate exclusion in an intergroup and same group social context. Responses were on a 6-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (really not okay) to 6 (really okay).	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention
Change in Likelihood of Inclusion in Intergroup and Same Group Contexts	This assessment consists of 5 items repeated 4 times to reflect different race and gender combinations for a total of 20 items. This measure is adapted from Cooley et al., 2019. The items ask participants to predict the likelihood of a child inviting someone to their birthday party, where the children they can invite may be of the same or a different race. Responses were on a 6-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (very unlikely) to 6 (very likely).	baseline, pre-intervention; change, one week following completion of the 8-week intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Maryland, College Park
• Collaborators: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Goodenow, C. (1993). The psychological sense of school membership among adolescents: Scale development and educational correlates. Psychology in the Schools, 30, 79-90. DOI:10.1002/1520-6807.
• Van Ryzin MJ, Gravely AA, Roseth CJ. Autonomy, belongingness, and engagement in school as contributors to adolescent psychological well-being. J Youth Adolesc. 2009 Jan;38(1):1-12. doi: 10.1007/s10964-007-9257-4. Epub 2007 Nov 30.
• Collie, R. J., Martin, A. J., Papworth, B. & Gins, P., (2016). Students' interpersonal relationships, personal best (PB) goals, and academic engagement, Learning and Individual Differences, 45, 65-76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2015.12.002
• Liben LS, Bigler RS. The developmental course of gender differentiation: conceptualizing, measuring, and evaluating constructs and pathways. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev. 2002;67(2):i-viii, 1-147; discussion 148-83.
• Mulvey KL, Rizzo MT, Killen M. Challenging gender stereotypes: Theory of mind and peer group dynamics. Dev Sci. 2016 Nov;19(6):999-1010. doi: 10.1111/desc.12345. Epub 2015 Sep 22.
• Bierman, K. L., & McCauley, E. (1987). Children's descriptions of their peer interactions: Useful information for clinical child assessment. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 16(1), 9-18. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15374424jccp1601_2
• Grutter J, Gasser L, Zuffiano A, Meyer B. Promoting Inclusion Via Cross-Group Friendship: The Mediating Role of Change in Trust and Sympathy. Child Dev. 2018 Jul;89(4):e414-e430. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12883. Epub 2017 Jun 19.
• Killen M, Burkholder AR, D'Esterre AP, Sims RN, Glidden J, Yee KM, Luken Raz KV, Elenbaas L, Rizzo MT, Woodward B, Samuelson A, Sweet TM, Stapleton LM. Testing the effectiveness of the Developing Inclusive Youth program: A multisite randomized control trial. Child Dev. 2022 May;93(3):732-750. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13785. Epub 2022 May 25.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 27, 2022
• Primary Completion (Estimated): December 23, 2023
• Study Completion (Estimated): January 31, 2024

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: October 27, 2022
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 9, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): November 17, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): May 26, 2023
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 24, 2023
• Last Verified: May 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: racism; child development; bias; classroom intervention; intergroup attitudes; prejudice; sexism; exclusion; moral reasoning; intergroup friendships
• Other Study ID Numbers: Developing Inclusive Youth; 5R01HD093698-04 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No