Constellations of risk factors as moderators of the impact of a randomized intervention on students’ reading skills in rural India

Individual, family and community risk factors might determine the success or failure of educational interventions. The study is a secondary analysis, aimed at identifying distinctive constellations of risk for educational attainment, and at exploring whether membership to these constellations moderated the impact of a cluster-randomized reading intervention in rural India. By means of latent profile analysis, four constellations of risk were identified based on individual and family risk-factors. Multilevel cumulative logit models confirmed that the intervention had a positive impact on the outcome, and revealed that profile membership did not moderate the effect of the intervention. However more nuanced analysis showed that the intervention worked differently for children with different risk-profiles depending on contextual factors.