PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Communication skills training helps improve how social work students interact with the people they safeguard and support

Communication skills training, including empathy training, can help social work students to develop their communication skills. Opportunities to practise communication skills in a safe and supportive environment through role-play and/or simulation, with feedback and reflection, helps students to improve their skills. The effect of doing this training face-to-face, online or via blended learning is largely unknown.

What is this review about?

Good communication skills are important for social work practice and are commonly taught on social work qualifying courses. There is a range of different types of educational interventions, with wide variations in theoretical basis, approach, duration and mode of delivery. This systematic review looks at whether different interventions are effective in producing the following outcomes: social work students’ knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviours.

What is the aim of this review?

This Campbell systematic review assesses whether communication skills training for social work students works, and which types of communication skills training, if any, were more effective and led to the most positive outcomes.

What studies are included?

This review summarises quantitative data from randomised and non-randomised studies. The 15 studies included in this review were undertaken in Canada, Australia and North America. The research is very limited in terms of scope and quality, and there are important weaknesses in the evidence base.

Does communication skills training improve the communicative abilities of social work students?

Systematic communication skills training shows some promising effects in the development of social work students’ communicative abilities, especially in terms of their ability to demonstrate empathy and interviewing skills.

What do the findings of the review mean?

Communication is very important for social work practice, so we need to ensure that student social workers have opportunities to develop their communication skills.

Too few studies fully assessed student characteristics such as age, sex and ethnicity or took account of how previous experience, commitments and motivation affected students’ learning.

Consideration of stakeholder involvement and collaboration (such as by people with lived experience) was also lacking. Only the role of the educator was considered.

The studies were largely of poor quality and investigated many different implementation features, which made it difficult to draw any firm conclusions about what makes the teaching and learning of communication skills in social work education effective.

Researchers conducting studies into communication skills training should seek to carry out robust and rigorous outcomes-focused studies. They should also consider trying to see how and where these interventions might work, as well as understanding for whom they may be effective.

How up-to-date is this review?

The review authors searched for studies that had been published until 15 June 2021.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

There is scattered evidence on the effectiveness of social and behaviour change communication interventions for HIV prevention among adolescent girls and young women

Interest in socio-behavioural interventions to support demand and uptake of HIV services is on the rise. Therefore, the evidence of their effectiveness needs to be systematically mapped to enable informed decision-making by sponsors, researchers, policymakers and public health experts.

This evidence and gap map (EGM) presents a consolidated evidence base of existing social and behaviour change communication interventions, and the end-user behaviours they target, in low- and middle-income countries. It looks at a range of strategies including mass media, community-based interventions, interpersonal interventions, and ICT and digital media-based interventions, and identifies gaps in programming.

The interactive evidence and gap map (EGM) is available here.

What is this EGM about?

Adolescent girls and young women around the world face challenges to achieving their sexual and reproductive health rights, including vulnerability to HIV and sexually-transmitted diseases. Evidence-informed interventions for HIV prevention, care and uptake of services targeting girls and women are critical in addressing these challenges.

What is the aim of this evidence and gap map (EGM)?

This EGM identifies, maps and presents all available evidence from systematic reviews and impact evaluations of interventions to strengthen the adoption of HIV prevention measures and participation in research among adolescent girls and young women in low- and middle-income countries.

What studies are included?

The EGM includes 458 studies – 43 systematic reviews and 415 impact evaluations – published in English since 2000.

The evidence is unevenly distributed across intervention and outcome categories. The most common interventions are on interpersonal communication, followed by community-based interventions. Most of these interventions were delivered by healthcare providers and educators.

In terms of geography, most of the identified research concentrates on Sub-Saharan Africa.

What are the main findings of this EGM?

The included studies mainly focus on enhancing knowledge-related capabilities to create behavioural and health impacts. There is a need for more studies to focus on interventions that help achieve envisioned behavioural and health outcomes.

Few studies explore the effectiveness of these interventions across diverse groups – such as pregnant women and new mothers, sex workers and people living with HIV. This scarcity of research leads to a limited understanding of the use of these interventions across critical sub-populations and multiple user segments.

Given the value of communication channels in shaping behaviour change discourse, this EGM looks at evidence across different communication strategies and platforms. However, we found little evidence on the use of digital media tools such as social media and mobile-based services.

There are also relatively few studies on the use of popular culture tools – including mass-media, theatre and other arts-based approaches.

What do the findings of this EGM mean?

The EGM underscores the need for better quality evidence to understand what interventions work, for whom, and towards what outcome.

How up-to-date is this EGM?

The authors searched for studies published up to April 2021.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Police stops are associated with reductions in crime but also a broad range of negative individual-level outcomes

Police stop interventions produce meaningful and significant reductions in crime without evidence of spatial displacement. However, people subject to stops are associated with significantly less desirable mental and physical health outcomes, attitudes toward police, and self-reported crime/delinquency. For some outcome measures, the negative effects of pedestrian stops are considerably more pronounced for youth, though the data did not permit a comparison of individual effects by race.

What is this review about?

Police stops have become one of the most controversial yet widely-used crime prevention strategies in modern policing. This intervention involves the police-initiated stop of an individual (or group of individuals) on the street, for the purpose of investigation and/or questioning. Police stops have been commonly used as a tactic to combat violent and gun-related crime.

The current review assesses the effect of police stops (used interchangeably here with “pedestrian stops”) on both place-based and person-based outcomes, including crime, spatial displacement, mental health, physical health, attitudes toward the police, and self-reported crime/delinquency.

What is the aim of this review?

This Campbell systematic review examines the effects of police-initiated pedestrian stops on both place-based and person-based outcomes. It synthesizes results from 40 studies across six outcome groupings. Studies were predominately conducted in the USA.

What studies are included?

Forty studies published between 1970-2021 are included in this review. Eligibility was limited to experimental and quasi-experimental studies with a treatment group of people or places that experienced police stops and a control group of people or places that did not experience police stops (or experienced a lower dosage of stops).

Studies focusing only on police-initiated traffic stops were excluded from this review. Only one eligible study was a randomized controlled trial, 33 studies were conducted in the USA, and seven were conducted in Europe.

What are the main findings of this review?

Police stop interventions lead to significant reductions in area-level crime with evidence of a diffusion of crime control benefits to nearby areas. However, methodological difficulties limit the strength of the causal inferences derived from these studies; further research is needed.

Individuals stopped by police are associated with significantly higher odds of both mental and physical health issues, significantly more negative attitudes toward the police, and elevated levels of self-reported crime/delinquency. The impact of a direct stop experience on mental health issues is also considerably larger for youth, compared to adults.

Despite this finding, place-based studies incorporating community surveys suggest that stop interventions do not impact community-level attitudes toward the police, and thus the negative effects of these interventions may be limited to the individuals directly experiencing them.

The findings of this review should be interpreted with caution, however, as only one randomized experiment assessing crime prevention outcomes was identified, and person-based studies were often unable to establish temporal ordering between the treatment and outcome measures.

What do the findings of the review mean?

Policing efforts focused on high-volume pedestrian stops are likely to reduce crime but may do so at the cost of negative health outcomes, negative attitudes toward the police, and higher levels of delinquency for individuals subject to the intervention. Given the net-widening effects of pedestrian stops (i.e., low proportions of stops lead to arrests or weapon seizures), these interventions may produce more harm than good. Police agencies should carefully weigh the potential benefits and harms associated with these interventions.

Furthermore, recent reviews on tactics such as hot spots policing and problem-oriented policing have demonstrated larger reductions in crime without similar backfire effects. The evidence-base for these tactics is also of considerably higher methodological rigor, generating stronger conclusions regarding program effectiveness. While it is possible that police agencies can mitigate the negative effects of pedestrian stops through a focus on improving officer conduct during police-citizen encounters, this review is unable to provide evidence of this effect.

How up-to-date is this review?

The authors of this review employed search strategies intended to capture studies through December 2021.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

One size does not fit all – inconsistent effects of inclusion on learning and psychosocial adjustment of children with special needs

The effects of placing children with special needs in grades K-12 into inclusive educational settings are inconsistent. Findings from this review suggest that, in general, inclusion neither increases nor decreases learning and psychosocial adjustment of children with special needs in the OECD countries.

What is this review about?

This review and meta-analysis summarises evidence from studies exploring the effects of inclusion on children with special needs in regular educational settings, compared with segregated educational settings.

The review summarises evidence from 15 non-randomised studies in three meta-analyses on language and literacy outcomes, math outcomes and overall psychosocial adjustment of children.

What is the aim of this review?

This review aims to explore the effects of placing children with special needs in inclusive educational settings, compared with segregated placement on measures of academic achievement and psychosocial adjustment. A secondary aim is to explore how different child or setting characteristics (gender, age, type and severity of special need, part- or full-time inclusive education, and co-teaching) might moderate outcomes.

What studies are included?

This review includes studies that evaluate the effects of placing children with special educational needs in mainstream educational settings (inclusion). A total of 94 studies were identified. However, only 15 of these were assessed to be of sufficient methodological quality to be included in the meta-analyses and only between six and eight studies could be synthesized in each of the meta-analyses.

Four studies were from the USA, three from the UK, two from the Netherlands, and one each from Switzerland, Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium and Denmark.

The studies included children with multiple types of disabilities such as learning disorders/intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, physical handicaps, visual impairments, and Down syndrome.

The studies all had important methodological weaknesses. None of the included studies used experimental designs with random assignment.

What are the main findings of this review?

Results of the meta-analyses do not suggest any consistent positive or negative effects of inclusion on children’s academic achievement as measured by language, literacy and math outcomes, or on the overall psychosocial adjustment of children. The studies in the analysis demonstrated a wide range of both large positive and large negative effect sizes; and although the average effect sizes did favour inclusion, they were small and none were statistically significant.

How has this intervention worked?

Supporters of mainstreaming or inclusion claim that segregated educational placement causes stigmatisation and social isolation, which may have detrimental effects on the self-concept, social identity, and self-confidence of students with special educational needs.

On the other hand, opponents suggest that placement in general education classrooms may have adverse effects for children with special needs, especially if the time and resources allocated for individualisation and differentiation are not aligned with student needs.

In line with these opposing positions, the findings from this review suggest that while some children with special needs may benefit from inclusive educational placement, other children may benefit from traditional special education in a segregated setting. Unfortunately, it was not possible to explore the effects of different kinds of inclusive education for different kinds of children with special needs.

What do the findings of the review mean?

The overall effects of inclusion on the academic achievement and overall psychosocial adjustment of students with special needs are inconsistent. Our findings are very similar to the results of previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which include studies published before 2000. It is very unlikely that inclusion in general increases or decreases learning and psychosocial adjustment in children with special needs.

These findings point to the need for an individual assessment of the specific child’s educational and psychosocial needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to placement in special education.

Research should explore the effects of different kinds of inclusive education for different kinds of children with special needs, to expand the knowledge base on what works for whom.

How up-to-date is this review?

The review authors searched for studies up to 30 September 2021.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Evidence and gap map finds 50 studies on teacher training for the inclusion of students with disabilities in low- and middle-income Asia-Pacific countries

Only 16 out of 41 countries report evidence on in-service teacher professional development for disability inclusion in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) of the Asia-Pacific region. These LMICs are still transitioning from segregated schooling to inclusive education.

A majority of the identified interventions focus on changing teacher attitudes towards the inclusion of students with disabilities and understanding different forms of disabilities.

The interactive evidence and gap map (EGM) is available here.

What is this evidence and gap map about?

More than 1 billion people live with disabilities, 80% of them in LMICs. While it is widely recognised that teacher readiness and capability are key contributors to a successful transition towards disability-inclusive education, in-service teacher professional development for disability inclusion remains an under-researched area.

This evidence and gap map will help governments, schools and policymakers to identify areas where there is sufficient evidence and areas where more evidence is needed. The EGM will assist agencies in deciding where to channel their resources, to:

• support interventions with a greater evidence base
• improve evidence collection where the evidence base is weak
• re-assess support for current interventions.

What is the aim of this EGM?

The aim of this EGM is to identify evidence on interventions focused on in-service teacher professional development for the inclusion of students with disabilities. The EGM considers early years to Year 12 education in LMICs in the Asia-Pacific region.

What studies are included?

The 50 studies included in this EGM were published between January 2000 and December 2021. Most (29 studies) were published in the last five years.
The studies vary greatly in their methods: a few have experimental designs and many use observational techniques for data collection.

What are the main findings of this EGM?

The included studies are unequally distributed across the intervention and outcome categories of the EGM. A significant number of interventions focus on changing teacher attitudes and understanding of disability, as many of these countries are in the early stages of the inclusive education agenda.

Only three studies discuss interventions for supporting mental health amongst students with a disability. One study reports an intervention to support students with physical disabilities where the teachers received training on mobility disability, as part of a larger teacher development programme.

Almost half of the 50 included studies are in mainstream school settings. None of the interventions identified support students with disabilities during emergency or crisis situations. This should be a key focus in the light of the current pandemic and widespread environmental disasters.

What do the findings of the map mean?

The evidence collated here is unevenly distributed and there is room for more studies in this space. The EGM highlights the following needs:

• Uptake of primary research using robust methods to measure intervention effectiveness and impact
• Interventions designed to support school mental health and psychosocial wellbeing for students with disabilities
• Support for education systems’ efforts on evidence synthesis through regional alliances and the formation of evidence hubs

How up-to-date is this EGM?

The authors searched for studies published up to December 2021.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Limited evidence on interventions to improve executive functions in children affected by prenatal alcohol exposure

This review found limited evidence for the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve executive functioning (EF) in children with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE). Promising results were found only for response inhibition (the ability to inhibit prepotent responses, preferencing more goal-directed action). However, the ability to detect overall effects is severely limited by a lack of large comparison studies in the area.

What is this review about?

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a preventable, life-long disability which poses significant cost to individuals, families and societies. Despite growing evidence exploring the profile of FASD, evidence on effective treatments of the condition is sparse.

Given prevalence estimates of around 5% of the general population, and higher in vulnerable samples, rigorous and comprehensive assessments of feasible interventions for FASD are a necessity.

The focus of this review is studies which assess the impact of psychological interventions designed to improve EF in children impacted by PAE. Eligible outcomes include any measure of EF as per contemporary popular models of the construct (discussed in detail in methodology section of the systematic review). Examples include: attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibition, planning, and organisation.

What is the aim of this review?

This Campbell systematic review examines the impact of interventions designed to improve executive functioning in children with a history of prenatal alcohol exposure. The review summarises evidence from eleven studies, including seven treatment-comparison studies and four single-group studies.

What studies are included?

Eleven studies are included, with only seven high-quality randomised or quasi- experimental studies, and four single group pre-post intervention studies. The randomised and quasi-experimental studies are synthesised using meta-analysis. Of these seven studies, all were carried out in either Canada or the USA.

What are the main findings of this review?

Overall, the studies have important methodological weaknesses that temper the review findings, most notably very small sample sizes or incomplete reporting.

While the pattern of results arising from the synthesis generally suggest positive intervention effects, the analyses did not reach statistical significance, aside from response inhibition. Response inhibition is the ability to inhibit behavioural responses in favour of goal-relevant behaviour, and this review found a medium-sized effect for children with PAE who participate in an EF-focused intervention compared to children who do not.

There appear to be no statistically significant differences between children with PAE who participated in EF interventions versus those who did not on the following direct measures of EF: auditory attention, visual attention, cognitive flexibility, attentional inhibition, verbal working memory or planning.

Similarly, there appear to be no statistically significant differences between children with PAE who participated in EF interventions versus those who did not on the following indirect measures of EF: global executive function, behavioural regulation, emotional control, shifting or inhibition.

What do the findings of the review mean?

Only a small number of eligible comparison group studies are included in the present analyses (n = 7), and it is likely that relatively small sample sizes hinder detection of effects across outcomes.

The findings of this review therefore illustrate the need for a greater number of high quality comparison studies with larger sample sizes. This will allow for more definitive conclusions to be drawn regarding the overall effectiveness of interventions for EF in children with FASD.

How up-to-date is this review?

The review authors searched for studies up to December 2020.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

There is a small but growing evidence base underlying ICT interventions for prevention and response to sexual and gender-based violence in low- and middle-income countries

Methodologically rigorous evidence examining the effectiveness of information and communication technology (ICT) in preventing and responding to sexual and gender-based violence against women and children in low- and middle-income countries is still relatively low, and almost non-existent with respect to children. However, with increasing interventions, future high quality studies appear to be increasing.

The interactive evidence and gap map (EGM) is available here.

What is this evidence and gap map (EGM) about?

The problem of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women and children is prevalent in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Adoption of ICT has increased exponentially throughout the world in the past decade. As new types of ICT interventions are being implemented with the purpose of preventing and/or responding to SGBV against women and children in LMICs, donors and policymakers have been looking for evidence based on rigorous studies that assess the effectiveness of such interventions. This EGM shows the available evidence from individual studies and systematic reviews.

What is the aim of this evidence and gap map (EGM)?

The primary goal of this EGM is to establish a baseline for the state of evidence relating to the use of ICT for preventing and responding to sexual and gender-based violence against women and children in low- and middle-income countries.

What studies are included?

The EGM includes systematic reviews, academic studies and grey literature from January 2005 to July 2021, focusing on:

1. women and girls
2. all children, aged 18 or under and
3. SGBV prevention and/or response service providers in LMIC

Ten studies met the inclusion criteria. Of these, two are systematic reviews, two are scoping reviews and the remaining six are individual studies (two of which had separately published protocols, which are also included in the EGM).

Studies and reviews were categorised by type of intervention, and outcomes reflected the RESPECT Women Framework for preventing violence against women (World Health Organization 2019) and the INSPIRE Seven Strategies for Ending Violence against Children (World Health Organization 2016).

What are the main findings of this EGM?

No studies focused on using ICT exclusively for children. There is some evidence of impact in the areas of using ICT:

1. to influence gender norms related to SGBV prevention and/or response
2. in the form of mobile applications to increase safety and security
3. to collect evidence related to SGBV incidents and user perceptions of SGBV services.

What do the findings of this EGM mean?

The results indicate a need for more rigorous studies on using ICT for SGBV prevention and/or response conducted in LMICs.

Specific research gap areas include: using harmonized and standardized impact indicators, child-focused interventions, and studies explicitly linking how ICT contributes to intermediate outcomes related to SGBV (identified under the RESPECT and INSPIRE frameworks) and ultimately to prevention and response outcomes.

How up-to-date is this EGM?

The authors searched for studies published up to July 2021.