HIPPY NEW ZEALAND: AN EVALUATION OVERVIEW.

• Author: BarHava-Monteith, Galia

INTRODUCTION

The Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) is a home-based intervention programme, aimed at the educational enrichment of preschool youngsters. The programme targets parents within economically stressed communities who have low educational levels. Children from financially disadvantaged backgrounds are said to be at increased risk for educational failure (Ceci 1996, Morris et al. 1996). With growing numbers of New Zealand children coming from poor homes (Hassall 1997) this issue is of increasing importance to the New Zealand community and to policy makers.

This paper reports on the findings of a study aimed at providing a rigorous evaluation of HIPPY's benefits to both children and their caregivers, as well as providing information about process issues facing the programme. The next section of the paper provides some background on the wider context of early education intervention programmes in New Zealand as well as a description of the HIPPY programme itself and its evaluation history. The paper continues with sections on the overall methodological framework, the range of methods used to measure outcomes for children, the method used to elicit information on programme outcomes from tutors and caregivers, and the methods used in the process evaluation. Further sections discuss the findings of the outcome evaluation and the themes emerging from the process evaluation.

BACKGROUND

HIPPY is a school preparation programme focused on pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills (Kagitcibasi 1996). HIPPY centres on the parent-child dyad, with an explicit aim of increasing parents' awareness of their potential and strengths as home educators. The core aspect of the HIPPY programme is the parent-child interaction. Parents facilitate their children's learning using a structured workbook activity for 15 to 20 minutes a day, five days a week, 30 weeks a year for two years from the age of four.

The HIPPY home tutors are themselves mothers of preschoolers from the same communities (Lombard 1994). The tutors often have very little formal educational experience, and for many this is their first paid position (Westheimer 1997). The tutors meet with participating primary caregivers (who are usually the mothers) in their home every fortnight to go over the activities using a role-playing technique. In addition, parents attend group meetings every fortnight where the activities for the following week are rehearsed. The aim of this method is to ensure that all the mothers, including those who may be illiterate, are fully familiar and comfortable with the programme's materials (Lombard 1994). Furthermore, the use of the role-play enables parents and tutors to discuss issues such as the aims of specific activities, the needs of learners and the developmental capabilities of young children. The use of role-play may assist parents in learning new teaching skills (Westheimer 1997). In addition to the primary focus on children's learning, in many cases primary caregivers are encouraged to receive some kind of enhancement such as adult education courses.

HIPPY is located in areas that are considered to have a high proportion of educationally disadvantaged children. The local centres are run by a local co-ordinator who is usually a professional woman with a background in education (Lombard 1994).

The teaching technique used in HIPPY is that of programmed instruction, where the materials are highly structured to maximise children's success (Lombard 1994). Although the use of structured lesson plans has been called into question in preschool curriculum (Schweinhart and Weikart 1997), the HIPPY materials were designed to ensure that parents, irrespective of their own educational background, would be able to deliver them successfully to their children. Furthermore, the materials used in the programme are said to produce clearly visible changes in children's comprehension and ability, so that parents will consistently see a high value for their involvement (Lombard 1994).

The HIPPY materials are aimed at facilitating language, sensory, perceptual discrimination and problem-solving skills (Lombard 1994, Max 1995). The facilitation of language is seen as a key element of the programme, particularly interaction with books. The programme does not assume that parents have any prior experience in reading to their children, so every aspect of the interaction is clearly stated. It is important to note that although the programme is written in the primary language of each prospective country (e.g. English in New Zealand), the programme materials are flexible enough to enable caregivers to use their own language with the materials (National Council of Jewish Women 1993).

HIPPY originated in Israel, where it was established in 1969. Since then it has been implemented in Turkey, Chile, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, in some 30 US states and, since 1992, in New Zealand (Lombard 1994). HIPPY was introduced to New Zealand by the Pacific Foundation for Health, Education and Parent Support, a charitable trust. HIPPY was identified by the Trust's Executive Director Lesley Max (Max 1990) as a researched educational strategy that might improve the school performance of New Zealand children from educationally disadvantaged circumstances. The first HIPPY programme was implemented in 1992 as part of a prototype "one stop shop" Preschool and Whanau centre in Papakura. The other components of this centre were preschool, family support and a Plunket service. Following early encouraging results, the Foundation advocated to Government that further centres should be established. The 1993 budget provided for six further pilot Family Service Centres in Mangere, Otara, Huntly, Opotiki, Porirua and Motueka, where HIPPY was included among the services. These centres were funded by the New Zealand Community Funding Agency (now part of the Children, Young Persons and Families Agency) and were subsequently evaluated (see Burgon 1997).

Six "stand alone" HIPPY programmes that do not operate as a part of a family service centre were established between 1995-1998 as a result of requests made to the Pacific Foundation by various community organisations. These "stand alone" programmes are funded by a variety of sources obtained through fund raising by both the National Director of HIPPY and the centre co-ordinators. Currently, HIPPY New Zealand is working towards the expansion of HIPPY and obtaining increased government funding (Max, personal communication).

HIPPY's Evaluation History

The programme has been repeatedly evaluated since its establishment in Israel in 1969. Since then evaluations have been carried out in Turkey, the US, the Netherlands, South Africa, Mexico and New Zealand. Evaluation designs have ranged from informal observations and interviews (Arkansas), to quasi-experimental designs (the Netherlands), and experimental design involving random allocation (Israel, Turkey) (Lombard 1994). The focus of the evaluations has been primarily on the children, assessing their cognitive ability, teachers' perceptions of their ability, and improvement in skills such as hand-eye co-ordination. In general, results showed significant differences between HIPPY and control group children (Bekman 1998, Lombard 1994), with the most notable differences being in Maths achievement (National Council of Jewish Women 1993).

In a recent government evaluation of the pilot government funded HIPPY programmes in New Zealand, it was found that HIPPY children's performance on both reading and maths was on a much higher level than was to be expected by their circumstances (Burgon 1997). Moreover, the overall academic level of progression of HIPPY children was much faster than would be expected had they not participated in the programme according to the evaluation. In particular their faster advancement was indicated by the change in their performance on a widely used standardised test of children's receptive vocabulary. Seventy-five per cent of HIPPY children improved their standard scores from baseline assessment to post-intervention assessment (Burgon 1997).

The government evaluation may have suffered from a fundamental problem of the incompatibility of the comparison group used for most of the measures. The group to which HIPPY children were compared were four to five months older on average than the HIPPY sample. In addition, the majority of the comparison group were of...