Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness

Intervention, Evaluation, and Policy Studies

Experimental Impacts of a Preschool Intervention in Chile on Children's
Language Outcomes: Moderation by Student Absenteeism

Mary Catherine Arbourab*, Hirokazu Yoshikawac, John Willettd, Christina Weilande, Catherine
Snowd, Susana Mendivef, M. Clara Baratag & Ernesto Trevinoh
Publishing models and article dates explained

http://dx.doi.org

Received: 7 Jan 2015

Accepted: 12 Oct 2015

Accepted author version posted online: 30 Jan 2016

Abstract
Despite consensus that school absenteeism has negative consequences for children's life
outcomes, until recently, little was known about the prevalence of absenteeism or its potential to
moderate the impacts of school-based interventions. This study provides evidence from a
randomized experiment of a preschool intervention involving 1876 children in 64 schools in
Chile that chronic absenteeism develops in preschool and is predicted by multiple risk factors for
poor academic achievement. We find moreover that individual children's likelihood of
absenteeism moderated the intervention's impact on children's language and literacy outcomes
such that there were positive impacts of the intervention only for children with the lowest

likelihood of absenteeism. Experimental evaluations of school-based interventions that do not

take absenteeism into account may thus mask heterogeneous effects. In the context of policy
pushes to expand early education and preschool access in the United States and globally, these
moderation analyses may prove essential for appropriately interpreting the results of
experimental studies of school-based interventions.

References :

Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Harvard University Center on the Developing Child, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, New York, New York, USA

Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

University of Michigan School of Education, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile