Examining the Perceived Relevance of Core PT Components with a Diverse Sample: First Person Accounts of Low-Income Latino/a Parents

Introduction: Parent Training (PT) interventions focus on teaching parenting skills such as encouragement of child pro-social behaviors, improvement of parent-child interactions, non-punitive limit setting, family problem solving, and supervision and monitoring. The effectiveness of PT interventions for the treatment of child behavior problems has been thoroughly documented in the literature. However, evidence demonstrating the impact of PT as preventative interventions for at-risk and diverse populations continues to be limited. A lack of cultural fit with PT interventions can constitute a major barrier for successful engagement and retention of diverse populations in prevention research. The current poster describes qualitative findings from a RCT implemented with the main goal of comparing and contrasting the impact of two differentially culturally adapted versions of an efficacious PT intervention with at-risk and low-income Latino/a immigrant families. The adapted parenting program is known as Parent Management Training, the Oregon Model (PMTO).

 Methods:  Participating parents self-identified as Latinos(as) and had a child between 5 and 12 years of age who exhibited mild to moderate behavioral problems. Qualitative data were collected through focus group interviews implemented immediately after the completion of the intervention. Only participants assigned to the intervention conditions and who completed at least 6 sessions were included in the interviews (n =112). Descriptive analyses were conducted to analyze levels of attendance and a deductive thematic analysis was conducted to explore levels of satisfaction regarding core intervention components.

Results: High retention was achieved in both adapted interventions with an overall retention of 87% of families and 84% of fathers. High levels of participant satisfaction were reported in both interventions. No significant satisfaction differences were found between interventions on any of the individual sessions focused on the PMTO core components. Similarly, there was not a significant difference in overall satisfaction between interventions across all four waves of the study, t (128) = -.670, p = .528, d = 0.547. Qualitative findings indicated that the core PT components in both adapted interventions were identified by participants as highly relevant to their parenting practices (interrater agreement range: 92.3% - 99.4%; Cohen’s Kappa range: .65 - .99). Findings also indicated areas of opportunity to improve the delivery method of the intervention, particularly if PT components contrasted with the participants’ parenting beliefs and practices.

Conclusions: Findings have significant implications for public health prevention efforts with diverse populations. Results can inform future cultural adaptation studies focused on preventative PT interventions with underserved ethnic minority populations.