Examining the need for and impact of a light-touch mobile technology intervention to promote positive parenting and school readiness in young children

• In Event: Using Family Routines to Improve Children’s Literacy and Math Skills and Parenting Practices

Abstract

Brief, technology-based programs are a low-cost, high-reach approach to connecting parents with research-informed parenting information. Reported here are two investigations that examined the need for and impact of one such program, The 5-a-Day Parenting Program, for parents of young children. The 5-a-Day Parenting Program is a light-touch intervention delivered via Smartphones. The program centers on promotion of 5 daily parenting activities: reading to children, playing with children, expressing affection, family meal sharing, and following a bedtime routine. Through text messages and online videos, parents learn about the importance of doing each of these activities daily within the context of promoting school readiness, which is an umbrella term for skills in social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral domains. In study 1, we considered the need for the 5-a-Day Parenting Program. Study 2 is a proof-of-concept trial (Czajkowski et al., 2015). We examined if participation in the 5-a-Day Parenting program led to changes in primary and secondary outcomes. Primary outcomes of interest included use of the 5 specific parenting activities and daily routines. Secondary outcomes included parenting confidence, chaos within the home, and children’s social/emotional behavior problems.

Study 1 included 568 parents, with a child ages 2-5 years old, that completed a brief online questionnaire. Parents were primarily Black/African American (79%) mothers (89.6%). For this investigation, parents reported the number of days (0-7) in the previous week they did each parenting activity. Study 2 included a proof-of-concept trial using a pre-post design with 94 parents that went through the 5-a-Day Parenting Program and completed baseline and follow-up questionnaire. Parents were primarily Black/African American (70.2%) or White (21.2%) mothers (91.5%). At baseline and follow-up, parents completed the following questionnaires to assess primary and secondary outcomes: report of doing the five parenting activities, the Child Routines Questionnaire: Preschool Version (Wittig, 2005), the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (Matheny, Wachs, Ludwig, & Phillips, 1995), The Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (Gibaud-Wallston & Wandersman, 1978), and the Preschool Pediatric Symptoms Checklist (Sheldrick et al., 2012). Paired samples t-tests determined if there were pre-post changes in parents’ reports of primary and secondary outcomes. For statistically significant results, Cohen’s d effect size was calculated.

In study 1, reading was found to be the least often reported parenting activity with 63.4% of parents reporting reading to their child 3 days or less in the previous week. The most frequently reported activity was showing affection with the average rate being nearly every day of the prior week. On average, parents also reported following a bedtime routine and meal sharing most days of the week; however, for each activity approximately 10% of families reported a frequency of 3 days a week or less. In study 2, paired samples t-test analyses showed statistically significant increases in the 5 parenting activities (t[71] = -4.43, p = .00; effect size = .48) and routines (t[75] = -8.68, p = .00; effect size = .49) from baseline to 4-week follow-up. In terms of secondary outcomes, no statistically significant results emerged.

Authors

• Lucy McGoron, Wayne State University
  Presenting Author

• Hilary Horn Ratner

• Kathryn A.G. Knoff

• Steven J. Ondersma