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A comment on A 20-year Follow-Up to an Early Childhood Stimulation Program in Jamaica. Parent comment

Re:A 20-year Follow-Up to an Early Childhood Stimulation Pro... by misterhtmlcss on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @01:23AM (#17131631)
Simply put this research at this stage proves nothing, however it could indicate an area requiring further analysis, but that's about it.

"Correlation does not imply causation" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_cause_and_consequen...

It's really easy to see that lots of reasons that aren't directly due to the program could have caused the changes. It could have been as simple as an expectation change amongst the parents, upon joining the program; how their children will perform better and therefore they did or it could have been the parents in the neighborhood most engaged in their children having a better life and when the opportunity to join the program became available they joined.

Stuff like this is notoriously difficult to prove, but I'm hopeful and glad to see research is being done.

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Re:A 20-year Follow-Up to an Early Childhood Stimulation Pro... by wojtekkru on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @03:13AM (#17131948)
"The original ECD program, which lasted two years, enrolled 127 stunted children aged 9-24 months. Researchers randomly assigned these children to one of four groups: a psychosocial stimulation intervention, a nutrition intervention, both interventions, or neither intervention (the comparison group)."

That was my first thought too: the positive results could be effect of special attention and expectations (placebo effect). However comparing "both interventions" group with each single intervention group should address this.

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