Session: Engaging Parents Through Technology: Development, Innovation, and Usage (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

This symposium presents a series of technology extensions of evidence- based parenting programs to increase reach and parent engagement.  Evidence-based parenting interventions have a strong foundation of research and promising results, but the reach of these interventions is limited. Online programming may help overcome common barriers such as inconvenient scheduling, lack of child care, and transportation.   Technology has the potential to engage parents in both universal and targeted interventions.  The symposium presents innovative methods of dissemination and implementation across a variety of populations (e.g. low income, predominantly African American, urban parents of young children; recently deployed military parents and their partners).  

The first paper, “Adapting an Evidence-Based Parent Training Program for Delivery on an Android Tablet,” focuses on the development of an online version of the Chicago Parent Program for the Android tablet. It describes the partnership between the developers of the evidence-based program, the designers of the online program, and an advisory panel of parents, emphasizing the potential and challenges of tablet technology. 

The second paper, “Engaging Parents in School-based Prevention Programming Using Media and Online Technology” presents an online supplement of the GOALS program for Head Start families.  The paper outlines a three stage development process: conducting surveys to understand parent preferences, developing and testing the website, and gathering parent impressions of the website.  Initial results are presented. 

The third paper, “Differences in Usage of an Online Supplement to an Intervention for Military Parents” analyzes initial data on parents’ use of online tools for a military tailored version of PTMO—ADAPT (After Deployment: Adaptive Parenting Tools). Guided by the stages of change model, this paper examined differences in parents who used the online tools and those who did not by parents’ views of the intervention, face-to-face attendance, and education. 

Successes and challenges of integrating online programming with evidence-based parenting programs will be discussed, including the potential impact on parental education, views on parent training, and face-to-face attendance.  The importance of understanding parents’ preferences, marketing strategies to increase reach, and the potential of new technology to increase engagement will be addressed.