Overview |
Research Projects
The Parenting Research Projects
University
of Miami Research Site |
University of California at Los Angeles Research Site
The
early years of life (birth to age 5) are crucial for cognitive and
social/emotional development. Parents play a critical role in their
children’s development and are responsible for their children’s
environment. Children develop within the context of their family and their
development is affected by the nature of the relationship with their
parents. Previous early intervention efforts have typically included early
education for children in child care centers and social or mental health
services for the parents in their role as adults, with only marginal
attention devoted to parenting behavior. The interventions initiated by
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) focus on parenting
behaviors and the relationship of the parent with his or her own child.
Through its Child
Development Studies Section, CDC has initiated Legacy for Children™, a set
of randomized, controlled, longitudinal research projects. Legacy for
Children™ will examine the potential for improvement in child developmental
outcomes through programs designed to influence parenting behavior. The
first two research sites are located at the University of Miami and the
University of California at Los Angeles.
Research
Questions: The
primary research question for Legacy for Children™ is: Do children in
the intervention groups achieve better developmental outcomes than do the
children in the comparison groups? There are five related research
questions:
(1) Do parents become
engaged in the intervention program? (2) Do parents adopt parenting
behaviors that are more likely to foster child development? (3) Does one
project have a greater effect than the other project? (4) Do parents in
the intervention program develop a greater sense of community? (5) What
are the costs of delivering the intervention and do the potential benefits
outweigh the costs?
Target
Population: The
participating families are those whose children, on average, would be
expected to fall below national norms on a range of developmental
variables. Each project will enroll 120 children in the intervention group
and 120 children in the comparison group.
The
Intervention: A
variety of intervention activities in multiple settings will be offered to
parents in the intervention group for a period of 3 to 5 years beginning
at their children’s birth. The activities will be intense and sustained.
They will include parent and parent/child group meetings, visits to the
home, and participation in community events and activities.
The intervention
program aims to promote parents’ belief that their behavior towards
their child can make a difference in short- and long-term developmental
outcomes. We hypothesize that parents will do a better job of adopting and
maintaining preferred parenting behaviors if they receive support for
these behaviors from a peer group and have a sense of belonging to a
community larger than themselves.
The CDC Legacy for
Children™ Projects will emphasize the following:
-
Parental
responsibility, parental investment in the child, parental commitment
of time and energy
-
Parent-child
interaction style
-
Parent as guide of
child’s socialization (behavioral guidance and regulation)
-
Parent as guide of
child’s verbal and cognitive development
Measurement:
Process, cost,
and outcome data will be collected. Process data will allow the
researchers to understand and interpret the outcomes achieved by study
participants. Cost data will estimate the costs and benefits of delivering
the intervention. In order to determine if there are lasting effects on
parenting behavior, family functioning, and child development, outcome
data will be collected periodically during the project and will continue
until the target children reach adulthood.
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University
of Miami
The Miami Legacy
for Children™ is a randomized, controlled, longitudinal research project
designed to examine the potential for improvement in child developmental
outcomes. The intervention program will begin at birth and continue until
the child is 5 years of age. One hundred and twenty families will be
enrolled in the intervention group, and one hundred and twenty will be
enrolled in the control group.
Goals: The primary goal
of the intervention is to enhance child development outcomes by
influencing parenting behaviors through group meetings and building a
sense of community. The specific goals for Miami are to: 1) promote
responsive and nurturing relationships between the mother and child, 2)
encourage verbal and cognitive development and appropriate behavioral
guidance, 3) encourage parents to be responsible and committed, and 4)
provide mothers with a broader view of and participation in communities.
Target Population: The
target population for the Miami project is mothers who have zip codes in
areas that correspond to the catchment area of critically low-performing
schools. To participate, mothers must live within 50 minutes of the three
community intervention sites and have the additional risk factor of less
than 12 years education. The project will exclude mothers with very low
birth weight babies or children with disabilities; mothers who do not
speak English; and mothers who have a diagnosis of mental illness, drug
dependency, alcoholism, or more than two other children. Mothers will be
recruited in the hospital or within one week after discharge.
The Intervention: There
will be three primary components of the intervention: 1) parenting group
sessions, 2) visits to the home, and 3) activities to build a sense of
community.
Parenting groups will
meet weekly for approximately 1.5 hours and will consist of 10
mother/infant dyads. Topics, which will be repeated as children grow,
include: basic care, health and safety, parent issues, behavioral
guidance, social skills, play and toy making, language and literacy, and
individual differences. Separate fathers' groups will meet less
frequently.
There will be four home
visits per year to follow up on the parenting sessions and to reinforce
the curriculum. During these visits the group leader will observe how the
family home serves as a nurturing environment.
There will be two field
trips per year to community sites. Celebrations and trips will be planned
by parents during the group sessions. The Miami project plans to build a
sense of community by promoting group cohesion among peers and encouraging
parental involvement in the community.
Measurement: Process,
cost, and outcome data will be collected by the Project Coordinating
Center and the Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina and analyzed
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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University
of California at Los Angeles
The UCLA Legacy for
Children™ is a randomized, controlled, longitudinal research project
designed to examine the potential for improvement in child developmental
outcomes. The intervention program will begin prenatally and continue
until the child is 36 months of age. One hundred and twenty families
will be enrolled in the intervention group and one hundred and twenty will
be enrolled in the control group.
Goals: The primary goal
of the intervention is to enhance child development outcomes by
influencing parenting behaviors through group meetings and by building a
sense of community. The specific goals for UCLA are to 1) promote warm,
responsive, and nurturing relationships between mother and child, 2)
enhance the mother's ability to help her child regulate his or her
emotions and behaviors, 3) foster nonintrusive maternal verbal and object
stimulation appropriate to the child's developmental level, 4) increase
the mother's self-awareness of her effectiveness in promoting her child's
development through her own parenting practices, and 5) build a sense of
community by promoting group cohesion among mothers of children of similar
ages.
Target Population: The
target population for the UCLA project includes women who are Medi-Cal
eligible, are English speaking, live within 10 miles of UCLA, and are 18
years of age or older. UCLA will exclude mothers who have more than two
children (including the target child), are known substance abusers, or
have a serious mental disorder such as schizophrenia. Mothers who receive
their care from the pre-natal and well-baby UCLA Medi-Cal HMO will be
recruited prior to their last trimester of pregnancy (by 28 weeks).
The Intervention: There
will be three primary components of the intervention: 1) parenting group
sessions, 2) visits to the home, and 3) activities to build a sense of
community.
Parenting groups will
begin prenatally. UCLA will offer 10-12 weekly 1-hour meetings,
approximately half of which will occur before the birth of the baby.
Starting when the babies reach 2 months of age, a group leader will lead 3
blocks of 10 weekly, 2-hour meetings, separated by 4-6 week breaks. Topics
covered during the group sessions will include family health and safety,
communication skills, behavioral regulation skills, emotional development,
temperament, attachment and autonomy, how to play with a child, helping
children learn, using praise and encouragement, limit setting, and problem
solving. These topics will be centered around significant changes in child
development or touchpoints. Children will participate in every other group
meeting.
A nurse will make two
or three visits to the home during the prenatal period and early infancy.
Between each block of group sessions, the intervention specialist will
conduct two visits to the home to provide an expanded and individualized
focus on the topics that were discussed in the previous group sessions.
UCLA will offer
opportunities for the mothers and children to join together in holiday and
birthday celebrations to provide further opportunities to build a sense of
community. One field trip per phase will be planned.
Measurement: Process,
cost, and outcome data will be collected by the Project Coordinating
Center and the Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina and analyzed
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.