The effect of a parental mHealth resource on language outcomes in 4- to 5-year-old children
Loading...
Date
Authors
Le Roux, Elizabeth Wilhelmina
Eccles, Renata
Abdoola, Shabnam Salim
Graham, Marien Alet
Van der Linde, Jeannie
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AOSIS
Abstract
BACKGROUND : The use of mobile health (mHealth) technology is rapidly expanding in healthcare worldwide. mHealth tools may provide parents with access to resources essential for promoting language development.
AIM : The current study aimed to determine how an mHealth parental resource influenced 42 preschool children's (4.0-5.11 months old) language abilities after a 17-week intervention period.
SETTING : Participants were identified from six early childhood development (ECD) centres from a low-income community in Tshwane, South Africa.
METHOD : A randomised controlled trial (RCT), pre-test post-test research design was employed to determine whether an mHealth parental resource influenced 42 preschool children's (4.0-5.11 months old) language abilities after a 17-week intervention period. Data were collected using the language subtests of a South African standardised protocol, the Emergent Literacy and Language Assessment Protocol (ELLA).
RESULTS : The parental mHealth application targeting language stimulation did not significantly improve the experimental group's language outcomes when compared with the control group because most of the parents (n = 27) used the application for less than 20% of the active days.
CONCLUSION : Providing parents with more support with mobile resources may lead to improved usage of the application.
Description
Keywords
Parental resource, Language development, Preschool children, Mobile health (mHealth), Early childhood development (ECD)
Sustainable Development Goals
Citation
Le Roux, E.W., Eccles, R.,
Abdoola, S., Graham, M. &
Van der Linde, J., 2022, ‘The
effect of a parental mHealth
resource on language
outcomes in 4- to 5-year-old
children’, South African
Journal of Childhood
Education 12(1), a1026.
https://DOI.org/10.4102/sajce.v12i1.1026.