Evaluating the effects of a virtual environment (STARBRIGHT World) with hospitalized children

The objective was to pilot test the impact of STARBRlGHT World (SBW)-a virt ual environment for seriously ill, hospitalized children. The impact of SBW was assessed with a series of nine replicated single system designs. The o utcomes were children's pain intensity, pain aversiveness, and anxiety. The results were aggregated using meta-analysis. At the individual child level , 6 of 27 contrasts between the two conditions reached significance. Overal l, there was a trend for the later participants to report greater impact in the SBW condition and this appeared to parallel the increase in the SBW sy stem's functionality. When the results were combined meta-analytically, the combined p value was less than .05 for pain intensity and pain aversivenes s and slightly greater than .05 for anxiety. This study provided modest sup port for the effectiveness of SBW and demonstrates the use of meta-analysis with single system designs.