Ongoing projects

• ERC Starting grant (PI): Leveraging early-adolescence for development: Experimental and longitudinal evidence from Ghana (with S. Wolf, S. Afu-Adwarfua, R. Appiah, E. Avornyo, K. Thomas, and N. Suntheimer).

Early adolescence is a key window for human development. Strategic timing of interventions during this life stage may seize opportunities and prevent risks; bolster the impact of earlier investments; and ease damages from previous adversity. Yet evidence on whether such programs can fulfil this potential, for which children, and through which channels, is scant, especially in low-resource settings, where 90% of the world’s 1.2 billion adolescents live. I will tackle these gaps by relying on a cohort of ~2,500 children approaching early adolescence. In 2015, this sample participated in a trial evaluating quality preschool education in Ghana and has been followed-up since: the program improved child development through middle childhood. I will re-randomise this sample at 12 years to test a parenting skills program to enhance early adolescent development through improved parenting support and parent-adolescent interactions. Children and parents will be re-interviewed when children are 13, 15, and 17 years through mixed-method data collection. Outcomes include adolescent social-emotional and academic skills, health (including stress biomarkers), and adult-life transitions. This data will allow testing dynamic complementarities between interventions during early childhood and early adolescence, or whether interventions in adolescence might compensate for earlier adversity in the short- and longer-term. Methodologically, these questions can be convincingly studied only if data are available for the same individuals over time, and if variations in exposure to early childhood and early adolescence programs are exogenously driven. This is the first study that addresses both requirements, providing a breakthrough. Heterogeneity by child gender and socioeconomic status, and mechanisms are further research foci. LEAD’s high-risk components are well-balanced by my in-depth knowledge of the field, methods, and study context, with high potential for scientific and societal impact.

• Nudges to improve learning and gender parity: Supporting parent engagement and Ghana’s educational response to Covid-19 using mobile phones  [AEA RCT Registry ID: AEARCTR-0006118] (with S. Wolf)

The Parental Nudges Project (PNP) is a household-level intervention in Ghana designed in partnership with Movva Technologies to improve school-aged children’s learning outcomes in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and to address gender parity in educational outcomes. Through the program, parents and other primary caregivers receive text messages in simple English with behavioral nudges aiming to improve engagement with their children’s learning and social-emotional development. The goal of the messages is to bring parents closer to their child’s school life by prompting them to engage with their children on topics such as school, future plans and sharing how they overcame similar challenges at their age. Further, some households are randomly assigned to receive messages that promote gender-equitable outcomes in education and broader development. Partnering with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and Movva, our goal is to evaluate the impact of the text-message-based behavioral change intervention on improving parental engagement in educational activities, parental beliefs about returns to education, as well as improvements in children’s learning, enrollment, attendance and gender parity in education.

• Examining long-term effects of Quality Preschool for Ghana’ Interventions on Academic and Non-Academic Outcomes in Middle-Childhood. Link to British Academy project page

Working with Innovations for Poverty Action and Ghana's Ministry of Education, this project evaluates the long-term effects of a teacher in-service and coaching program, with and without parental awareness meetings, to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches in improving kindergarten quality and children's school readiness in Ghana.  The co-Principal Investigators are Sharon Wolf, Lawrence Aber, Jere R. Behrman,

• Implementation Science Approach to Adolescent Nutrition & Neurodevelopment (with J. Croff and S. Adu-Afarwuah)

This project has two goals. The first is to establish the feasibility of adopting portable brain scans to measure adolescent brain development in Ghana. The seond is to pilot test a nutritional program for adolescents on their brain development and social and cognitive skills.

• Children's learning and development in the time of Covid19: Evidence from an ongoing longitudinal study in Ghana (with S. Wolf, J. Behrman, L. Aber, E. Tsinigo). Link to UKRI webpage

This study measures the effects of COVID-19 on children’s educational and developmental outcomes and builds on the Quality Preschool For Ghana (QP4G) study, a school-randomized trial conducted in 2015-1026 when children were in pre-primary school. Children and their families have been followed in an ongoing longitudinal study. The study’s results are providing the government and development partners with unique, real-time data to inform remote-learning and social-protection efforts, as well as the re-opening of schools which started in January 2021. The co-Principal Investigator is Sharon Wolf.