Divna Haslam

Evaluation of a brief parenting discussion group for parents of young children

Objective: Although behavioral parenting programs are effective at treating child behavioral problems, a significant number of parents experiencing these problems do not receive help, and briefer, more cost-effective parenting interventions are lacking. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a brief parenting discussion group. Method: Sixty-seven parents were randomly assigned to either an intervention or waitlist control condition. Parents in the intervention condition took part in a 2-hour discussion group in which they were taught positive parenting strategies to prevent and manage their childs disobedience, and they received 2 follow-up telephone calls after the discussion group. Results: Results showed that after intervention, there were reductions in child behavior problems and use of dysfunctional parenting and improvements in parental self-efficacy and the parenting experience for parents. These effects were maintained at 6-month follow-up. Conclusion: The results are promising because they show that a brief intervention can be minimally sufficient to improve child and parent outcomes for parents experiencing high levels of child behavior problems.

The Role of Parents, Parenting and the Family Environment in Children’s Post-Disaster Mental Health

There is widespread support for the hypothesis that, post-disaster, children’s mental health is impacted—at least in part—via the impact on parents, parenting, parent-child interactions, and the family environment. To some degree, the enthusiasm with which this hypothesis is held outstrips the evidence examining it. The current paper critically evaluates the empirical evidence for this hypothesis and concludes that although limited (both in terms of number of existing studies and methodological flaws), the extant literature indicates some parent-related variables, as well as some aspects of the family environment are likely to constitute risk or protective factors for children. Given that parenting is modifiable, it is proposed that the identified parent- and family-related factors represent important therapeutic targets, and a universal post-disaster parenting intervention (Disaster Recovery Triple P) is described.

The International Parenting Survey: Rationale, Development, and Potential Applications

ABSTRACT The quality of parent-child interactions and family relationships has a powerful influence on children’s development and well-being. The International Parenting Survey (IPS) is a brief, web-based survey developed to provide a cross-national, community-level, population snapshot of the experiences of parents related to raising children. The IPS was developed as a planning tool to assist policy makers and community agencies plan, implement, and evaluate parenting programs and as a tracking tool to evaluate parenting support programs in different countries. We report the preliminary psychometric properties of the IPS on various domains of measurement in an international sample of over 9,000 parents. Moderate to high reliabilities were obtained for all domains of measurement. High internal consistency reliabilities (α = .88–.97) were obtained for the domains of children’s behavior and emotional maladjustment, for parental self-efficacy, parental distress and parental beliefs. Moderate levels of reliabilities (α = .52–.83) were obtained for domains of parental consistency, coercive parenting, positive encouragements, and parent-child relationships. Overall, the measure appears to have satisfactory reliability justifying further psychometric validation studies in population level studies of parenting. Examples of uses of the IPS are described and directions for future research and policy explored.