| Abstrakt: |
Parent and family characteristics often impact a child's development and well-being. Due to this impact, many parenting programs have been developed to enhance parenting abilities. The purpose of this paper is to present a real-time evaluation of a community-based parenting education program in Western New York. The program is provided by Every Person Influences Children (EPIC), an agency that offers a variety of workshops for a diverse population of parents, and Baker Victory Services. The paper focuses specifically on the impact of the Ready Set Parent! program on parent/family outcomes and implications for parenting program practices. The program aim was to educate parents about tuning into and playing with children, fostering self-esteem, setting limits, and promoting literacy. The realist evaluation paradigm and a repeated measures design were utilized to investigate the patterns between client-specific factors (family factors), the intervention variables, and the outcomes. Statistical techniques, such as t-tests and binary logistic regression, were used to identify patterns in the data and provide a prediction of the odds of achieving a given outcome in a particular circumstance. Results indicated that parents improved significantly on the outcome of parental self efficacy. Also, scores increased on the Family Relations/Cohesion scale which measures communication styles, family interactions, and flexibility. Factors associated with this increase included parent gender, level of school completed, disability status, and the receipt of financial assistance. Results provide preliminary evidence that the intervention had a positive impact on parent outcomes. In addition, information regarding the characteristics associated with parent outcomes allows practitioners and program developers to make appropriate changes to interventions and focus especially on the parents with the greatest risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
