Poster #157 - What – and How – do Parents Want to Learn from Early Interventions?

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Parent-focused interventions are a popular and influential method of bolstering children’s school readiness skills. Of course, ensuring the implementation of early-intervention techniques is crucial to the success of the interventions themselves (Fixsen, Naoom, Blasé, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005). Yet little attention has been paid to what parents want to learn, and how they would prefer to learn it. In fact, there may be a disconnect between the intervention techniques heralded by researchers as most effective and those that families actually find appealing (Metzler, Sanders, Rusby, & Crowley, 2012).

If families are less inclined to participate, a program’s predicted impact is unlikely to be fully realized. It follows, then, that interventionists should find out what, and in which ways, families want to learn, and optimize programs accordingly. As part of a larger exploratory study, we asked these questions, in hopes of using the data themselves to structure future early-intervention that empower parents to help their children be better prepared for school.

We analyzed data from 474 Mechanical Turk users who were parents of children under the age of 10 (321 = mothers). Participants were socioeconomically diverse, with only 51.6% having earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, 29.1% identifying as non-white, and 56.5% having experienced food scarcity at least once in the past year.

In general, parents tended to endorse multiple class topics. To detect any trends in selection combinations, all topics were entered into a factor analysis using principle axis factoring with direct oblimin rotation. Results suggested a two-factor structure. Factor 1 (“Play-based learning”) included options such as making healthy living fun. Factor 2 (“School Readiness”) comprised options such as reading together. Neither factor differed with respect to parental education, race, or food scarcity (all ps >.16). However, both factors did relate to parent type, with mothers more likely to endorse Factor 1 (p=.004) and fathers more likely to endorse Factor 2 (p=.036). While no topics were unpopular, topics loading onto Factor 1 tended to be more popular than those for Factor 2 (see Figure 1).

In terms of how parents wanted to learn relevant information, video- and internet-based instruction were the two most popular choices (see Figure 2). Paper brochures, a common method of information dissemination, was one of the least popular options, with only 3% of participants ranking it as their top choice. However, no method was endorsed by all participants, highlighting the importance of considering individual differences in preference when structuring interventions. Interventionists might try adapting their content to multiple formats, in order to provide choices to parents.

The practical applications of these findings are clear. Increasingly common and affordable technology (e.g., smartphones) provides support to implement online and video-based instruction. Programs such as Facetime also offer the possibility of synthesizing these with instructor demonstrations and conversations, too. Indeed, by creating instructional materials that parents find interesting and accessible, practitioners can give interventions a better chance of making an impact with those who can benefit the most.

Authors

• Margaret Shavlik, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Amy Booth, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author