Parents: Beware of Another Misleading Infant Sleep-training Study (Continued)
Written by Craig Rogers, Posted on , in Section Editors Picks
* No Durability Statement. (maintenance of the interventions). How long were changes maintained?
* Inconsistent and limited follow up. The follow up study was twelve months. This data was reported using all original participants (n=14 and n=15) as opposed to the actual numbers after drop outs (n=7 and n=7) in each intervention by three months. What did the drop outs do? No information.
Presentation flaws include:
* The methods should indicate the final full sample size, not the recruited size (which was already too small to draw conclusions).
* The statistics presented are on different numbers of participants throughout the paper and number of participants tested is misleading or unclear in the tables.
* Measures should be described, including their reliability.
Interpretation flaws include:
* No distinctions were made about effects by child age. The average child age in the education group at the outset was significantly younger which could explain the higher stress scores for mothers at the end of the study. How old were the participants for which all data was collected?
* Most critically, in the summary of the study (abstract), which is what most people will only read, no cautions were presented in the conclusions about any of the flaws we have mentioned.
Instead, the paper concludes that "Both graduated extinction and bedtime fading provide significant sleep benefits above control, yet convey no adverse stress responses or long-term effects on parent-child attachment or child emotions and behavior."
This will mislead doctors, to believe that sleep training is fine for all babies.
"In summary, the problems of possible bias due to subjective data, lack of diagnostic criteria, lack of a fidelity check, problems with internal validity, no durability statement, inconsistent follow-up data, and limited generalizability due to the small sample size compromise the integrity and validity of this research. These multiple flaws prevent drawing any reliable conclusion regarding adverse effects to infants."
To read the full article on Psychologytoday.com, click here.
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