Session: Influences on Patterns of Parents’ Engagement and Participation Behaviors in Family Prevention Programs (Society for Prevention Research 22nd Annual Meeting)

Many prevention programs are evidence-based in that they have been shown to be effective overall for those who enroll, and these effects stand out even with substantial variability among participants in their benefit from the program (ITT analyses). There are many factors that contribute to better outcomes, including participant as well as implementation and provider characteristics, attendance, and learning processes during implementation. It is possible that participant characteristics influence participation: attendance (i.e., dosage) and the learning processes (i.e., participant responsiveness), which interacts with implementation and interventionist characteristics in an ongoing process across sessions, finally impacting curriculum uptake and outcomes.

The papers in this symposium look at this pathway with a particular focus on participation in evidence-based parenting interventions. Study 1 examines previously incarcerated mothers’ motivations for enrolling and continuing participation in an intervention study, showing that some motivations are associated with higher attendance. Study 2 uses growth mixture modeling to examine patterns of retention among Mexican American mothers and examines implementation and provider characteristics that predict retention after accounting for participant effects; results suggest that implementation characteristics at the group level must be considered when studying retention. Study 3 uses multilevel growth curve modeling to examine family tension and change over time as predictors of parents’ learning behavior, indicating a complex process of influence on parents’ engagement in learning across sessions.

Taken together, these papers will contribute to the overall understanding of the factors and processes that influence the participant’s role in various stages of participation in prevention programs. Results have the potential to inform prevention scientists and practitioners about productive motivations for enrolling in an intervention study versus motivations that may lead mothers to attend fewer sessions, provider characteristics that may promote mothers’ consistent attendance, and family characteristics that may influence parents’ learning during sessions.