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.