Language DevelopmentNCT03268928
Evaluating the Impact of Story Starters on Children's Language Development
A study testing Story Starters Intervention in people with Language Development, run by Julian Pine at 1 site in United Kingdom.
Trial summary
The aim of this project is to evaluate whether Beanstalk's 'Story Starters' intervention is effective in boosting vocabulary and grammatical development in young children. Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 3 to 5 yearsHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- Language Development
- What is being tested?
- Story Starters Intervention
- Type of treatment
- Lifestyle or therapy programme
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 198 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited Kingdom
- Study dates
- 4 Sep 2017to 31 Mar 2019
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- None posted in the registry
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 3 to 5 years
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Child
Who may be able to join
- All families will be included unless they fit the exclusion criteria
Who cannot join
- Children born before 37 weeks gestation (premature)
- Children who weighed less than 5lb 9oz at birth (low birth weight)
- Children who have had an ear infection/glue ear for longer than 3 months, 4-6 ear infections within a 6 month period or another identified hearing problem (e.g. at newborn hearing screening)
- Children with an identified developmental disability (e.g. Cerebral Palsy, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Fragile X syndrome, Muscular dystrophy, Di George syndrome, Down's syndrome, Williams syndrome)
- Children with a hearing or visual impairment
- Children who hear another language (not English) for 1 day or more in a typical week (please note that this also excludes children of parents who do not speak English)
- Children whose parents have a learning disability which puts their children at risk of language delay and excludes the parents from giving informed consent on their own and on their children's behalf.
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country.
United Kingdom1 site
Liverpool Language Lab at the University of Liverpool
Liverpool, Merseyside, L69 7ZA
About this study
The aim of this project is to evaluate whether Beanstalk's 'Story Starters' intervention is effective in boosting vocabulary and grammatical development in young children.
Read the detailed description
Children who read regularly with their parents or carers tend to learn language faster, enter school with a larger vocabulary of words and become more successful readers in school. Because of this, local authorities often commission services to promote family-based shared book reading. However, recent studies suggest that shared reading interventions work less effectively for children from disadvantaged backgrounds than originally thought, particularly when their parents have lower levels of education. This means that there is a danger that the benefits of shared reading will be restricted to children from more affluent homes and not get through to those who need them most. To solve this problem, there is a need to develop a better understanding of how reading interventions work and to evaluate existing shared reading interventions to determine whether they are effective in promoting young children's language development.
The aim of this project is to evaluate whether Beanstalk's 'Story Starters' intervention is effective in boosting vocabulary and grammatical development in young children. Story Starters is a reading intervention delivered by Beanstalk, a national children's literacy charity committed to ensuring no child faces the severe consequences of illiteracy. Beanstalk trains volunteers to provide caring and fun one-to-one support to disadvantaged children aged 3 and 4 in local nurseries, aiding their language development.
The project will compare the effects of the 'Story Starters' intervention against a wait-list control group. Children in the intervention group will receive the Story Starters intervention, delivered by a trained Beanstalk volunteer, at their preschool for six months. The trained volunteer will visit the child twice a week and deliver a one-to-one 20 minute book reading and play session. Children in the intervention group will also receive a new book each month which will be sent to their home address by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
Children in the wait list control group will also receive a new book each month from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library but they will not receive the 'Story Starters' intervention until after the project has ended.
- Conditions
- Language Development
- Being tested
- Story Starters Intervention, Wait-list Control
- Keywords
- Shared Book Reading, Language Development, Syntax, Vocabulary, Phonological Awareness, Young Children, Randomised Control Trial, Language Intervention
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Story Starters InterventionBehavioural
Shared reading intervention
Wait-list ControlBehavioural
Wait-list control
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Story Starters Intervention | Experimental | Children will receive the the Story Starters intervention for six months. Each child will be visited by a trained Story Starter volunteer twice a week while the child is in preschool. The sessions will last 20 minutes and in each session the Story Starter volunteer and child will read books and play with toys. The Story Starter volunteers will keep a record of the number of sessions each child attends.
Each child will receive one new book per month delivered to their home address by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. Receives: Behavioral: Story Starters Intervention |
| Wait-list Control | Other | Children in the wait-list control arm will continue to attend preschool as normal during the randomised controlled trial (RCT) and will receive the Story Starters intervention after the RCT has finished.
Each child will receive one new book per month delivered to their home address by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. Receives: Behavioral: Wait-list Control |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Change in baseline language skills - CELF
The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - Preschool 2 United Kingdom (CELF Preschool-2) will be administered. This is a published standardized measure of the language knowledge of individual children. The investigators will use three subtests to calculate each child's core language score. The three subtests measure knowledge of sentence structure, knowledge of word structure and expressive vocabulary.
Measured: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months
Change in baseline receptive vocabulary
The British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS) will be administered. This is a published standardised measure and will be used to measure receptive vocabulary of individual children.
Measured: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months
Change in baseline phonological awareness
The full Preschool Inventory of Phonological Awareness (PIPA) will be administered. This is a published standardised measure of phonological awareness of individual children. The investigators will use the PIPA to measure, rhyme awareness, syllable segmentation, alliteration awareness, phoneme isolation, phoneme segmentation and letter knowledge.
Measured: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months
Change in baseline language skills - the WellComm Screening tool
The WellComm Screening Tool will be administered. This is a published measure of language skills of individual children. The investigators will use the WellComm to measure expressive and receptive language skills.
Measured: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months
Secondary outcomes (3)
Fidelity to the intervention by the Beanstalk volunteer
Video recordings of the trained Beanstalk volunteers delivering 'Story Starter' sessions will be analysed to measure fidelity to the intervention and presence of target book reading behaviours. This will include coding for the presence of Dialogic book reading behaviours (prompting, evaluating, expanding and repeating). This will allow measurement of whether the volunteer adheres to the Story Starter intervention.
Measured: 6 months
Child engagement
Video recordings of the trained Beanstalk volunteers delivering 'Story Starter' sessions will be analysed to measure level of child engagement (Kucirkova, Messer \& Whitelock, 2012). This will include coding rate of pointing, rate of smiles and laughs, rate of less engaged behaviours and rate of vocal activity.
Measured: 6 months
Volunteer engagement
Video recordings of the trained Beanstalk volunteers delivering 'Story Starter' sessions will be analysed to measure level of volunteer engagement (Kucirkova, Messer \& Whitelock, 2012). This will include coding rate of pointing, rate of smiles and laughs, rate of less engaged behaviours and rate of vocal activity.
Measured: 6 months
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted31 Aug 2017
- Study start4 Sep 2017
- Primary completion31 Mar 2019
- Study completion31 Mar 2019
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Publications (3)Papers the sponsor has linked to this study.
- Other trials for Language DevelopmentStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- Quadruple blind
- Who is masked
- Participant, Care provider, Investigator, Outcomes assessor
- Enrolment
- 198 participants (actual)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- Julian Pine
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Responsible party
- Sponsor-investigator, Julian Pine, University of Liverpool
- Investigators
- Julian Pine, PhD, Principal investigator, The University of Liverpool
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT03268928
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- 1869
- Status last verified
- May 2018
- First submitted
- 25 Aug 2017
- Last updated
- 17 Apr 2019
- Results posted
- No
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
Publications
Kucirkova, N, Messer, D, Whitelock, D. Parents reading with their toddlers: the role of personalisation in book engagement. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 13(4): 445-470, 2012
Bus AG, van IJzendoorn MH, Pellegrini AD. Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research, 65: 1-21, 1995.
Mol SE, Bus AG, de Jong MT, Smeets DJH. Added value of dialogic parent-child book readings: A meta-analysis. Early Education and Development, 19: 7-26, 2008
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 17 Apr 2019. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Evaluating the Impact of Story Starters on Children's Language Development
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT03268928
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- 1869
- Conditions
- Language Development
- Keywords
- Shared Book Reading, Language Development, Syntax, Vocabulary, Phonological Awareness, Young Children, Randomised Control Trial, Language Intervention
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Enrolment
- 198 participants (actual)
- Lead sponsor
- Julian PineUniversity, hospital or other
- Study start
- 4 Sep 2017 (actual)
- Primary completion
- 31 Mar 2019 (actual)
- Study completion
- 31 Mar 2019 (actual)
- First posted
- 31 Aug 2017 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
The aim of this project is to evaluate whether Beanstalk's 'Story Starters' intervention is effective in boosting vocabulary and grammatical development in young children.
Detailed description
Children who read regularly with their parents or carers tend to learn language faster, enter school with a larger vocabulary of words and become more successful readers in school. Because of this, local authorities often commission services to promote family-based shared book reading. However, recent studies suggest that shared reading interventions work less effectively for children from disadvantaged backgrounds than originally thought, particularly when their parents have lower levels of education. This means that there is a danger that the benefits of shared reading will be restricted to children from more affluent homes and not get through to those who need them most. To solve this problem, there is a need to develop a better understanding of how reading interventions work and to evaluate existing shared reading interventions to determine whether they are effective in promoting young children's language development.
The aim of this project is to evaluate whether Beanstalk's 'Story Starters' intervention is effective in boosting vocabulary and grammatical development in young children. Story Starters is a reading intervention delivered by Beanstalk, a national children's literacy charity committed to ensuring no child faces the severe consequences of illiteracy. Beanstalk trains volunteers to provide caring and fun one-to-one support to disadvantaged children aged 3 and 4 in local nurseries, aiding their language development.
The project will compare the effects of the 'Story Starters' intervention against a wait-list control group. Children in the intervention group will receive the Story Starters intervention, delivered by a trained Beanstalk volunteer, at their preschool for six months. The trained volunteer will visit the child twice a week and deliver a one-to-one 20 minute book reading and play session. Children in the intervention group will also receive a new book each month which will be sent to their home address by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
Children in the wait list control group will also receive a new book each month from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library but they will not receive the 'Story Starters' intervention until after the project has ended.
Study design
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- Quadruple blind (participant, care provider, investigator, outcomes assessor)
- Number of arms
- 2
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Story Starters Intervention | Experimental | Behavioral: Story Starters InterventionChildren will receive the the Story Starters intervention for six months. Each child will be visited by a trained Story Starter volunteer twice a week while the child is in preschool. The sessions will last 20 minutes and in each session the Story Starter volunteer and child will read books and play with toys. The Story Starter volunteers will keep a record of the number of sessions each child attends. Each child will receive one new book per month delivered to their home address by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. |
| Wait-list Control | Other | Behavioral: Wait-list ControlChildren in the wait-list control arm will continue to attend preschool as normal during the randomised controlled trial (RCT) and will receive the Story Starters intervention after the RCT has finished. Each child will receive one new book per month delivered to their home address by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 3 to 5 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Age groups
- Child
Key inclusion criteria (1 listed)
- All families will be included unless they fit the exclusion criteria
Key exclusion criteria (7 listed)
- Children born before 37 weeks gestation (premature)
- Children who weighed less than 5lb 9oz at birth (low birth weight)
- Children who have had an ear infection/glue ear for longer than 3 months, 4-6 ear infections within a 6 month period or another identified hearing problem (e.g. at newborn hearing screening)
- Children with an identified developmental disability (e.g. Cerebral Palsy, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Fragile X syndrome, Muscular dystrophy, Di George syndrome, Down's syndrome, Williams syndrome)
- Children with a hearing or visual impairment
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Story Starters InterventionShared reading intervention | Behavioural | Story Starters Intervention |
| Wait-list ControlWait-list control | Behavioural | Wait-list Control |
Primary outcome
Change in baseline language skills - CELF
Time frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months
The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - Preschool 2 United Kingdom (CELF Preschool-2) will be administered. This is a published standardized measure of the language knowledge of individual children. The investigators will use three subtests to calculate each child's core language score. The three subtests measure knowledge of sentence structure, knowledge of word structure and expressive vocabulary.
Change in baseline receptive vocabulary
Time frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months
The British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS) will be administered. This is a published standardised measure and will be used to measure receptive vocabulary of individual children.
Change in baseline phonological awareness
Time frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months
The full Preschool Inventory of Phonological Awareness (PIPA) will be administered. This is a published standardised measure of phonological awareness of individual children. The investigators will use the PIPA to measure, rhyme awareness, syllable segmentation, alliteration awareness, phoneme isolation, phoneme segmentation and letter knowledge.
Change in baseline language skills - the WellComm Screening tool
Time frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months
The WellComm Screening Tool will be administered. This is a published measure of language skills of individual children. The investigators will use the WellComm to measure expressive and receptive language skills.
3 secondary outcomes
Fidelity to the intervention by the Beanstalk volunteer
Time frame: 6 months
Child engagement
Time frame: 6 months
Volunteer engagement
Time frame: 6 months
Results and safety
The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 17 Apr 2019.
- BackgroundKucirkova, N, Messer, D, Whitelock, D. Parents reading with their toddlers: the role of personalisation in book engagement. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 13(4): 445-470, 2012
- BackgroundBus AG, van IJzendoorn MH, Pellegrini AD. Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research, 65: 1-21, 1995.
- BackgroundMol SE, Bus AG, de Jong MT, Smeets DJH. Added value of dialogic parent-child book readings: A meta-analysis. Early Education and Development, 19: 7-26, 2008
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part. This study is not recruiting at the moment.
Julian Pine, PhD principal investigator
The University of Liverpool
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing Story Starters Intervention in people with Language Development, run by Julian Pine at 1 site in United Kingdom.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 1 inclusion and 7 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 17 Apr 2019. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in United Kingdom. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Change in baseline language skills - CELF (time frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months). The study lists 4 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT03268928, which also lists 3 linked publications.
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 17 Apr 2019.