Novel Approaches to Increase Family Engagement in Preventive Interventions for Parents of Young Children

Introduction:

Poverty is a key contributor of health and behavioral disparities for racial minorities, and research that informs preventive interventions to support children exposed to poverty is essential. Evidence-based parenting interventions in early childhood have the potential to attenuate risk attributable to poverty. Yet, poverty is typically associated with lower levels of participation in parenting interventions. Therefore, research into innovative, evidence-based engagement strategies to improve rates of parent participation in preventive interventions is necessary. This proposal examines ways of increasing parent participation in one such preventive intervention, ParentCorps, a 14-week behavioral parenting intervention that aims to mitigate the impact of poverty on PreKindergarten students. The present study tests novel family engagement strategies designed on the basis of behavioral economics (BE) principles (e.g., personalizing outreach messages with child’s name).

Methods:

The current proposal examines the potential impact of novel BE-infused strategies on parent initiation (attending at least 1 session) to ParentCorps. We are comparing initiation in 5 schools that are receiving BE-infused strategies to that in 4 control schools randomly assigned to outreach as usual. We are also comparing initiation in Fall 2016 to that in the same schools in Fall 2015.

Results:

Average attendance for all schools in the 2015-2016 school year was about 41% of the maximum capacity of 20 slots per session (M=8.29, SD=4.42, range: 1-33). Thus far, for schools that have held one parenting session, the mean program attendance in BE schools is 14.3 parents (SD = 7.64, range: 6-21), while control schools have a mean attendance of 4.67 parents (SD = 5.51, range: 1-11). Further, for the 2015-2016 school year, the mean attendance for the first session was 9.33 parents at BE schools (SD = 8.50, range: 1-18) and 10.33 parents at control schools (SD = 3.79, range: 6-13). Data collection will continue throughout the 2016-2017 school year.

Conclusions:

These findings suggest that BE-informed strategies, in addition to the usual family engagement strategies, increased parent initiation rates. These data are promising, as BE schools reached and exceeded the goal of 10 parents attending program initiation. Initiation attendance is particularly important for setting a precedent for high attendance in subsequent sessions—parents who attend at least one session are likely to return. Further research is necessary to determine the specific BE mechanisms that influence family engagement in preventive interventions in order to reduce barriers for parent participation and increase the impact of evidence-based programs for young children, such as ParentCorps.