Child Maltreatment, Parenting
Conditions
Brief summary
Fathers are disproportionately involved in and responsible for family violence. Forty percent of maltreatment cases include the child's father, which is quite considerable when one considers mothers spend more time with the child during the day and engage in a greater variety of activities, relative to fathers. Importantly, the majority of child victims were those five and younger. Contrary to these potential negative impacts, fathers contribute positively to many aspects of child development and overall family functioning, making unique contributions to child peer relationships, language development, academic skills, and the proficiency of the other parent in parenting tasks. Thus, efforts to emphasize the father's role in the child's life, and attenuate any potential risks due to child or family directed violence, represent key public health initiatives within prevention efforts. There are many potential prevention programs that have been developed to support male caregivers. The Nurturing Fathers program and the Coaching Our Children: Heightening Essential Skills program are two examples of father-focused preventive intervention efforts. However, these approaches have not typically been evaluated as preventive interventions in community-based samples using scientifically rigorous methods. Thus, the present study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches in reducing family violence and improving male caregiver competencies in a randomized, controlled trial. Specifically, Nurturing Fathers Alone and Nurturing Fathers + COACHES will be compared to an attention control, and male caregivers and their children will be randomly assigned to one of the three groups.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALBehavioral Parent Support
Parent training on effective child management strategies
BEHAVIORALShared Parent-Child Activities
Structured parent-child activities
BEHAVIORALCOACHES
This intervention involves practice of parenting strategies with facilitator monitoring and support.
Sponsors
Buffalo Prenatal Perinatal Network
Florida International University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
SINGLE (Outcomes Assessor)
Masking description
Parent-child observations will be conducted by a masked observer.
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
3 Years to 6 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Resident of Western New York * Have a target child three to six years of age * Have a male caregiver who consents to participate in the study * Caregiver and child can speak and understand English.
Exclusion criteria
* A child with an estimated IQ less than 70 * Any child who is presenting with severe developmental delays (e.g., autism level 2 or 3) * A child or caregiver who previously participated in the study * Any target child who has a male or female caregiver who has had a previous, founded, child protection complaint (will be excluded from the study and referred to alternative programming)
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Behavioral Observations of Parenting | Baseline, End of Intervention (8 weeks later), 1 month after end of intervention (12 weeks later) | The Dyadic Parent Child Interaction Coding scheme will be used to assess parent behaviors (negative Talk, Indirect and direct commands, labelled and unlabelled praise) and child behaviors (Negative talk, compliance, noncompliance) |
| Conflict Tactics Scale | Baseline, End of Intervention (8 weeks later), 1 month after end of intervention (12 weeks later) | This is a measure of conflict resolution and tactics used between the male Completed by the caregiver and the child's other parent. Scores range from This has never happened to More than 20 times in the past month. The scale measures frequency of behaviors from zero to more than 20 times. Higher scores indicate a worse outcome. |
| Parenting Alliance Inventory | Baseline, End of Intervention (8 weeks later), 1 month after end of intervention (12 weeks later) | This is a measure of alignment in parenting practices. Answers range from strongly agree to strongly disagree on a five point scale. Scores range from 1-5, with lower scores indicating improvement. |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed