What do we know about interventions targeting ethnic minority children and youth? A literature review

ABSTRACT

Across different countries, policy makers implement a variety of interventions aimed at bettering the life chances of ethnic minority youngsters, but we generally lack solid research evidence that such interventions indeed work in the intended ways. To locate evaluation studies that assess the results of such interventions in scientifically proven ways we conducted a computerized database search. Through a screening process, we reduced 2,718 potential studies to 81. The majority of the studies found positive effects or associations on a variety of outcomes for ethnic minority children and youth. Depending on the type of intervention, positive outcomes could be improved host country language command (for educational interventions), a more positive family environment (for family interventions) or a reduction of, for instance, depression symptoms (for health interventions). Our search only identified 15 interventions that successfully produced effect estimates. These effective interventions primarily targeted preschool children, incorporated parental involvement and were especially adapted to ethnic minority children and youth and their families. While the majority of the studies came from the US, we assess that several of the evaluated interventions are relevant in a European context. The paucity of European effective studies published in peer-reviewed journals calls for stronger evaluation designs of such future interventions in Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic minority
• children and youth
• intervention
• review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We searched the databases to which we had access through our research institution in 2017.

2. The inclusion criteria were decided upon in cooperation with the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI), who funded the report published in Danish (Olsen et al. 2018).