Home Visiting for Children with Developmental Delays: An Empirical Evaluation

• Main Author: Black, Tracy L.
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@USU 1996
• Subjects: home visiting; developmental delays; children; family; Psychology
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/6073; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7146&context=etd

Home visiting services have become an important and common component of early intervention for children with developmental delays. Currently, this group of children is the most frequent target of home visiting programs throughout the nation, although research evaluating the effectiveness of these programs is less pervasive. For this reason, a comprehensive analysis of studies within the home visiting literature that specifically focused on children with developmental delays and their families has been conducted. This effort has been accomplished through the process of meta-analysis. In addition to the computation of standardized mean difference effect sizes, emphasis was also placed on identifying the salient sample, intervention, and outcome characteristics of this group of studies. Results are discussed in terms of ecological validity or how well the findings of the study generalize to the world of practice, policy, additional research, and training in the field of home visiting. Overall, much of what we are observing in the research is applicable to current practice, specifically in regard to the home visiting procedure. However, discrepancies between research and practice have been found in regard to the target of the intervention and the training of the home visitor.