Paid NIH child development study seeks 6 and 12 month olds -- DC in-home appointments

[AFWestat]

Hello again!

Just bumping this thread up again for a couple of reasons. First, we've completed our assessment round of the 12 month group. Thanks to all the DC Urban Mommers who helped contribute to childhood research! We still need about 15 more in the 6 month group to help, however. If your little one is 5-7 months old, please sign up today!

Secondly, I'm happy to announce we've also opened up the research to toddlers! If your child is 23-35 months old or 35-37 months old, we need your help with this research. Just as with the 6 and 12 month groups, families who participate receive a $25 dollars and a book for baby. Most parents and kids alike also find the developmental games fun! So please consider signing up!

Thanks, and please let me know if you have any questions! Here again is the link to sign up:

http://bit.ly/1CruWuF

[Anonymous]

Why is Westat willing to arrange in-home visit with parents in "western" DC but not the eastern portion of the city? There is something unsettling about the picture being painted when you are most interested in suburban and wealthier areas of DC most.

Also, is it really professional to gather subjects through this route? Is this how high quality research is done?

[AFWestat]

Anonymous wrote:Why is Westat willing to arrange in-home visit with parents in "western" DC but not the eastern portion of the city? There is something unsettling about the picture being painted when you are most interested in suburban and wealthier areas of DC most.

Also, is it really professional to gather subjects through this route? Is this how high quality research is done?

Good questions, thanks for asking!

Unfortunately, we only have a handful of testers who are able to do home visits, and since we are located in Rockville most of them have a travel radius near that area. That said, we are always looking for new ways to expand our study to more parts of the DMV. In fact, we recently expanded to the Pasadena, Maryland area, and the tester performing home visits in that area actually has a travel radius that covers much of east DC. I'll talk to the research team and clarify which new neighborhoods this includes and add them to the website.

It's also worth noting that this study is a formative research project and does not need to be a representative sample. That's why I--a Westat employee--was able to help contribute to the study by signing up my family to participate, and why we are also able to take the same child in multiple phases (i.e., we've had several parents who's children have taken both the 6 and 12 month tests).

As to your last point, gathering participants via social and digital media is actually very common these days. Universities, research organizations like Westat, and government institutions alike are all turning to it to help them recruit participants for public health and social science research. In fact--just for an example that's not related to Westat--about a month ago my family participated in a "Peekaboo study" as part of the Georgetown Early Learning project that my wife heard about on the U Street Tots Yahoo listserve. All research organizations do of course still have a screening process to eliminate participants who are not qualified, but from a recruitment perspective there's little difference between finding participants like this and hanging up flyers around the area, for example.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

[Anonymous]

I participated last month with my 12 month old DD and we had a great experience. Entertaining for her, plus a new Sandra Boynton book and $25! The researcher was very professional and I'm glad we did it. We'd do it again if we could.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also participated in this study. (Full disclosure, I'm also an employee at Westat, but employees were able to participate this time because we don't need a representative sample). Just wrote up my thoughts and I thought I'd share them with more details for anybody who's interested:

I found the experience to be pretty fun. Our daughter took the study for 6 month olds. A nice interviewer named Noura come over to our house on Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, and she was there for about 45 mins. All she did is give our daughter a few basic toys (blocks and hoops) to play with and see how she interacted with them. Then she also saw how well she sat up, responded to her name (and a few other words like "no"), and generally moved around. At the end, she gave us results in 3 categories (our daughter was reportedly average for speech, high average for motor control, and above average for cognitive in her age group ). She sat in her high chair almost the whole time (other than the sitting test) and seemed to like playing with the toys from our interviewer. I assume it might be slightly different for 1 year olds, but the general process is probably the same.

Look, Westat Researcher, your interviewers are NOT qualified to give these kinds of results. They are not trained or certified in any child development area. Who gives a crap if you're not giving out "scientific."

You could be potentially screening kids with delays and giving these "results." Stop doing it; it's unethical.

[AFWestat]

Anonymous wrote:I participated last month with my 12 month old DD and we had a great experience. Entertaining for her, plus a new Sandra Boynton book and $25! The researcher was very professional and I'm glad we did it. We'd do it again if we could.

Thanks for your support!

[AFWestat]

Anonymous wrote:

Look, Westat Researcher, your interviewers are NOT qualified to give these kinds of results. They are not trained or certified in any child development area. Who gives a crap if you're not giving out "scientific."

You could be potentially screening kids with delays and giving these "results." Stop doing it; it's unethical.

Thank you for your concern.

This is my fault for misinterpreting what the interviewer told me, and I should not have used the language I did above. She did not give us any results, and only gave us very general learnings about the process. Although participant families can expect to see how their child interacts with the development games in the study and learn what their child can do on their own, we do not provide any official results whatsoever. Since this has been posed as a concern previously, our interviewers have furthermore been extra careful to make sure their language is clear and that families understand they can not expect to use this experience as a tool to professionally judge their baby or toddler's own development.

Nevertheless, most parents and kids alike have found it to be a fun experience that they can still learn from, and we are happy to have all of the local moms' support to help support childhood research.