Improving Access to Early Parent Education and Support

描述(申请人提供)：在最初的3年里，儿童的长期发展轨迹已经确立，孩子每天接受的父母教育的质量深刻地影响着这些轨迹。然而，对许多父母来说，过渡到为人父母是一个困难的过程，可能会导致父母压力和社会孤立，以及缺乏育儿能力和信心。这些困难可能会干扰婴儿最佳的社交、情感和认知发展，并可能增加虐待儿童的风险。针对婴儿家庭的家访和小组育儿计划成本高、覆盖范围有限，这意味着大多数新家庭根本得不到任何服务。自我管理的育儿计划为普通家庭提供了一个有吸引力的选择，包括那些中等风险的家庭。它们通常成本较低，克服了参加育儿小组的障碍，在增加父母的知识、信心和技能以及减轻他们的压力方面表现出了良好的效果。然而，很少有人注意到低成本、自我管理、互动的多媒体方法对婴幼儿父母的潜在价值。我们建议开发和评估一项针对婴幼儿父母的互动视频电子邮件服务(IVES)(前三年为IVES)，该服务集成了自动电子邮件、视频流和互动网站技术，为幼儿父母提供频繁、持续的家长教育和支持服务。该计划将包括一系列有吸引力的电子邮件，提供教育内容以及指向(A)为每个主题模拟目标技能的视频小插曲和(B)互动网站的链接，在该网站上，父母可以与其他父母互动，以获得社会支持、自我评估、访问其他家庭实践活动，以及访问主题档案。在第一阶段，我们建议开发和评估婴儿父母3个月原型(婴儿IVES)的可行性。我们将在一项随机对照试验中评估该计划的可行性(即有效性、消费者满意度和使用情况)，试验对象为80名头胎婴儿的母亲。母亲们将被随机分成两组，立即接受IVES或等待4个月。母亲的知识、技能、适应能力和社会支持的测量将在基线和测试后获得，以及母亲对计划的满意度和使用情况的测量。我们将考察IVES在改善母亲的育儿知识、技能、社会支持、自我效能感、压力和育儿乐趣方面相对于等待名单控制条件的有效性，以及这些影响的潜在调节因素，如孩子的气质、母亲的抑郁和收入。我们还将调查母亲使用该程序的程度，并对其吸引力、有用性、相关性和可用性感到满意。这种创新的IVES方法有可能为广大新父母带来基于证据的父母教育和支持，否则他们将得不到任何服务，从而可能增加家庭幸福的普遍程度。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): During the first 3 years, children's long-term developmental trajectories are established, and the quality of parenting the child receives on a daily basis profoundly influences these trajectories. The transition to parenthood is a difficult one for many parents, however, and can lead to parental stress and social isolation and to lack of parenting competence and confidence. These difficulties can then interfere with optimal social, emotional, and cognitive development in the infant and can increase risk for child maltreatment. The high cost and limited reach of home visiting and group-based parenting programs for families of infants means that most new families receive no services at all. Self-administered parenting programs offer an attractive alternative for the general population of families, including those at moderate risk. They are typically low in cost, overcome barriers to attendance at parenting groups, and have shown promising effects in increasing parents' knowledge, confidence, and skill, and in reducing their stress. Little attention has been paid, however, to the potential value of low-cost, self-administered, interactive multimedia approaches for parents of infants and toddlers. We propose to develop and evaluate an interactive video email service (IVES) for parents of infants and toddlers (IVES for the First 3 Years) that integrates automated email, video streaming, and interactive website technologies to deliver frequent, ongoing parent education and support services to parents of young children. The program will involve a series of attractive email messages that provide educational content as well as links to (a) video vignettes that model targeted skills for each topic and (b) an interactive website where parents can interact with other parents for social support, self-assess, access additional home practice activities, and access archives of topics. In Phase 1, we propose to develop and evaluate the feasibility of a 3-month prototype for parents of infants (IVES for Infants). We will evaluate the feasibility (i.e. efficacy, consumer satisfaction, and usage) of this program in a randomized controlled trial with 80 mothers of first-born infants. Mothers will be randomized to receive IVES for Infants immediately or to wait 4 months. Measures of mothers' knowledge, skills, adjustment, and social support will be obtained at baseline and at post-test, as well as measures of mothers' program satisfaction and usage. We will examine the efficacy of IVES for Infants in improving mothers' parenting knowledge, skills, social support, self- efficacy, stress, and pleasure in parenting relative to the waitlist control condition, as well as potential moderators of these effects, such as child temperament, maternal depression, and income. We will also examine the degree to which mothers use the program and are satisfied with its appeal, usefulness, relevance, and usability. This innovative IVES approach has the potential to bring evidence-based parent education and support to a broad population of new parents who would otherwise receive no services, thereby potentially increasing the prevalence of family well-being.