Evaluation of a Community-Based Participatory Model of Family Education

Introduction:

Family Academy: College Bound Babies (CBB) is a promising parent education model for low-income, primarily African-American, parents of children 0-3 years old who live in a geographic zone in Minneapolis characterized by low school readiness rates, a wide educational achievement gap, high poverty, and high rates of family and community violence. It is a unique model, developed through a grassroots community-engaged process with participants, practitioners and researchers. CBB is the early childhood parent education component of the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) of Minneapolis, a zone-based approach to building a continuum of educational and social support for children, birth to age 18, and their families, ensuring all children in NAZ are college-ready for college. In December 2011, NAZ was awarded a 28 million dollar Promise Neighborhoods grant from the federal government to support expansion and evaluation of its model. CBB plays a large role in this expansion, as it is the most prominent evidence-based support offered to families by the NAZ, and as such, NAZ is highly invested in its success.

Methods: 

CBB seeks to reduce the racial achievement gap before kindergarten by teaching and promoting evidence-based parenting practices that foster children’s school readiness and healthy development. To demonstrate the efficacy of this program, a community-based participatory approach was used to develop a unique measurement model to evaluate change in parent knowledge and practices resulting from participation in the program. The measurement model diverges from traditional distal measures of target constructs, to specifically evaluate the degree to which parents receiving the intervention actually demonstrate increased use of the behavior within their daily lives. We do this through use of the Language ENvironmental Analysis (LENA) system, a cutting-edge digital recording device and analysis system developed and validated by the LENA Foundation, in conjunction with a Parent Knowledge and Practices Questionnaire (PKPQ) that was developed jointly by university researchers, community members, and former CBB participants. 

Results: This poster will report preliminary results from the first half of our dual stage randomized control trial in which pre and post-intervention data was collected on approximately 20 treatment and 20 control families.

Conclusion: Results of the full evaluation will document the efficacy of an evidence-based parent education program for the specific community served by NAZ, which has strong potential to generalize to other highly distressed urban areas and families. The poster will also discuss the challenges and opportunities experienced when conducting a randomized control trial within a Community-Based Participatory Research approach.