Christine Garvey

Parent Training of Toddlers in Day Care in Low-Income Urban Communities

The authors tested a 12-week parent training program with parents (n = 208) and teachers (n = 77) of 2-3-year-olds in day care centers serving low-income families of color in Chicago. Eleven centers were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions: (a) parent and teacher training (PT + TT), (b) parent training (PT), (c) teacher training (TT), and (d) waiting list control (C). After controlling for parent stress, PT and PT + TT parents reported higher self-efficacy and less coercive discipline and were observed to have more positive behaviors than C and TT parents. Among toddlers in high-risk behavior problem groups, toddlers in the experimental conditions showed greater improvement than controls. Most effects were retained 1 year later. Benefits were greatest when parents directly received training.

Implementation fidelity in community-based interventions

Implementation fidelity is the degree to which an intervention is delivered as intended and is critical to successful translation of evidence-based interventions into practice. Diminished fidelity may be why interventions that work well in highly controlled trials may fail to yield the same outcomes when applied in real life contexts. The purpose of this paper is to define implementation fidelity and describe its importance for the larger science of implementation, discuss data collection methods and current efforts in measuring implementation fidelity in community-based prevention interventions, and present future research directions for measuring implementation fidelity that will advance implementation science.

The Chicago Parent Program: Comparing 1-Year Outcomes for African American and Latino Parents of Young Children

Data were merged from two prevention randomized trials testing 1-year outcomes of a parenting skills program, the Chicago Parent Program (CPP) and comparing its effects for African-American (n = 291) versus Latino (n = 213) parents and their preschool children. Compared to controls, intervention parents had improved self-efficacy, used less corporal punishment and more consistent discipline, and demonstrated more positive parenting. Intervention children had greater reductions in behavior problems based on parent-report, teacher-report, and observation. Although improvements from the CPP were evident for parents in both racial/ethnic groups, Latino parents reported greater improvements in their childrens behavior and in parenting self-efficacy but exhibited greater decreases in praise. Findings support the efficacy of the CPP for African American and Latino parents and young children from low-income urban communities.

What does the NCATS measure

The purpose of this study was to examine what aspects of the mother-child relationship are measured by the Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scale (NCATS). A racially heterogeneous sample of 128 mothers completed questionnaires measuring maternal depression, parenting self-efficacy, knowledge of developmental and parenting principles, and perceived difficult toddler temperament. Mothers and children were also videotaped during home visits while completing two teaching tasks that were later scored using the NCATS. NCATS Parent subscale scores were significantly related to maternal knowledge and education but unrelated to depression and self-efficacy. Child subscale scores were unrelated to all of the study variables, including perceived difficult temperament. Significant differences were noted among African-American, Hispanic, and white mothers. The findings suggest that the NCATS taps cognitive factors more reliably than affective factors underlying the mother-child relationship and the cognitive factors may be culturally biased.

Promoting Mental Health in Early Childhood Programs Serving Families From Low-income Neighborhoods

Although the majority of young children growing up in low-income communities will not experience mental health problems, a proportion of children will develop problems that can be painful for families and costly to society. There is growing consensus that preventive interventions in the first 5 years of life are the most cost-effective strategy for reducing childrens mental health problems. The purposes of this article are to (a) present the case for providing health promotion and preventive interventions to economically disadvantaged parents of young children as standard practice in early childhood programs and (b) describe the feasibility and utility of incorporating mental health promotion services in child care centers serving low-income families using the Chicago Parent Program (CPP) as an example. The CPP is an evidence-based intervention designed in collaboration with low-income, ethnic minority parents to promote positive parenting skills and reduce behavior problems in young children. J Am Psychiatr Nurses Assoc, 2007; 13(5), 313-320. DOI: 10.1177/1078390307306996