Building Child and Family Resiliency in the Face of Political Violence: Evidence from Nicaragua

• In Event: Using Quasi-Experimental Approaches to Study Child Development in Low and Middle-Income Countries

Abstract

At least one in ten children globally are exposed to political violence, a number that is projected to rise in the coming years (Kadir, Shenoda, Pitterman, & Goldhagen, 2018). Exposure to political violence is associated with less parental warmth and cognitive stimulation, increased use of harsh discipline, and poor behavioral, health, and academic outcomes over the lifecourse (e.g., Boxer et al., 2013). However, much of the evidence on exposure to political violence and child development is correlational and relies on small, localized samples. Further, little is known about the role of early childhood policy interventions in preventing or mitigating the negative effects of violence exposure on children and families.

In this paper, which has been invited for submission to the Special Section on Registered Reports in Child Development, we examine: (1) the effect of exposure to political violence in Nicaragua on child behavior and parent-child interactions, and (2) the role of a home visit parenting intervention as a community-level protective factor with the potential to help families buffer the adverse consequences of violence exposure. We conduct a secondary analysis using data originally collected as part of a randomized controlled trial of a large-scale home visit parenting intervention. Baseline data were collected in 2013 from ~3,200 families, and the same families were re-interviewed in 2018. Child internalizing and externalizing behavior was measured via direct assessment, and parent-child interactions were measured via an adapted version of the Home Observation Measurement of the Environment focusing on emotional and cognitive stimulation (Caldwell, 1984).

While the survey team was in the middle of follow-up data collection, a political crisis erupted and quickly turned violent, such that 65% of the follow-up interviews occurred pre-crisis, and 35% occurred during the crisis. This creates a natural experiment, enabling us to compare outcomes among families interviewed before the crisis with those interviewed during the crisis in order to estimate the effect of political violence on child behavior and parent-child interactions (Table 1). We also examine how these effects vary depending on (randomized) assignment to the home visit program at the community level. Given the program’s emphasis on promoting parental warmth, reducing physical punishment, and fostering a social support system for parents, we expect that families who participated in home visits in the years leading up to the political violence will be better equipped to adopt effective coping strategies.

We expand the literature on early child development policy in three main ways. First, we use a nationally representative sample, and we employ multiple quasi-experimental approaches to move the field towards a causal understanding of the consequences of political violence on parenting and child behavior. Second, we focus on an underexplored protective factor at the community level, a home visit program, which is an especially policy-relevant protective factor. Finally, by focusing on Nicaragua, we add cultural and geographical diversity to the literature on community violence and child development, which to date has focused mostly on the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Group Authors

Jane Leer (Duke University), Florencia Lopez-Boo (Inter-American Development Bank), Savannah Norman (Duke University), Leonardo Pinzon (Inter-American Development Bank)

Author

• Jane Leer, Boston College
  Presenting Author