Speaking from my interest in a different field, drug trials, it’s very helpful to gauge the success of your trial on an objective metric. Avoid relying on surveys, interviews, and other fuzzy, subjective responses.
Some possibilities include:
Days of school truancy and grades for the 7 and 12 year old children.
BMI of the children, if they’re not getting enough to eat.
The diet of the children.
Changes in living space (i.e. if they move into a space with more room after getting the money)
Changes in how well the kids are sleeping (you could give them some sort of sleep monitor)
Consistency of medication compliance by the mother.
If mom or kids are willing, you could measure salivary cortisol, Alpha-Amylase, sIgA, or DHEA levels as noninvasive stress and immune biomarkers. I believe there are also hair cortisol tests that would allow you to get a hair sample at the end of the trial and retroactively measure stress changes throughout the period.
Speaking from my interest in a different field, drug trials, it’s very helpful to gauge the success of your trial on an objective metric. Avoid relying on surveys, interviews, and other fuzzy, subjective responses.
Some possibilities include:
Days of school truancy and grades for the 7 and 12 year old children.
BMI of the children, if they’re not getting enough to eat.
The diet of the children.
Changes in living space (i.e. if they move into a space with more room after getting the money)
Changes in how well the kids are sleeping (you could give them some sort of sleep monitor)
Consistency of medication compliance by the mother.
If mom or kids are willing, you could measure salivary cortisol, Alpha-Amylase, sIgA, or DHEA levels as noninvasive stress and immune biomarkers. I believe there are also hair cortisol tests that would allow you to get a hair sample at the end of the trial and retroactively measure stress changes throughout the period.