Impact of age -paced parenting newsletters on urban families with at-risk children
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of age-paced parenting newsletters on families with children at-risk for developmental delay. The families were recruited at two urban pediatric clinics when the children were between 3 and 18 months of age. Sixty families were randomly assigned to the intervention group (n = 30) and the control group ( n = 30). Families in the intervention group were mailed monthly issues of Building Blocks, a newsletter focusing on parenting and child development. When the children reached 36 months of age, intervention and control group participants were administered: the StimQ-Toddler (StimQ-T), a self-report measure of the home environment, the Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scale (NCATS), an observational measure of parent-child interaction, and the Parenting Behavior Questionnaire (PBQ, a self-report measure of parenting styles. A satisfaction questionnaire was also administered to intervention group participants. Results from the satisfaction questionnaire indicate that parents viewed the newsletters favorably, and asserted that the newsletters helped them become better parents. These positive reactions were also demonstrated experimentally. Intervention group families received significantly higher scores on three out of four StimQ-T subscales. These findings suggest that parents who received the newsletters provided their children with more learning materials, read to them with more regularity and frequency, and taught them more cognitively stimulating activities. These results were moderated by maternal education and parity such that lesser-educated mothers and those with few children benefited more from the intervention. Additionally, results revealed that intervention group families obtained higher scores on the authoritative subscale of the PBQ. This suggests that newsletter recipients reportedly employed more appropriate childrearing strategies relative to control group parents. In contrast, no significant differences were found with respect to parent-child interactions. These results suggest that newsletters provide a viable alternative or supplementary approach to parent education.
Subject Area
Developmental psychology|Social psychology
Recommended Citation
Tineo, Wendy, "Impact of age -paced parenting newsletters on urban families with at-risk children" (2002). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI3061339.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI3061339
