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Parenting in 2 Worlds: Effects of a Culturally Adapted Intervention for Urban American Indians on Parenting Skills and Family Functioning

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Abstract

Parenting in 2 Worlds (P2W) is a culturally grounded parenting intervention that addresses the distinctive social and cultural worlds of urban American Indian (AI) families. P2W was culturally adapted through community-based participatory research in three urban AI communities with diverse tribal backgrounds. This paper reports the immediate outcomes of P2W in a randomized controlled trial, utilizing data from 575 parents of AI children (ages 10–17). Parents were assigned to P2W or to the comparison group, an informational family health curriculum, Healthy Families in 2 Worlds (HF2W). Both the P2W and HF2W curricula consisted of 10 workshops delivered weekly by AI community facilitators. Pretests were administered at the first workshop and a post-test at the last workshop. Tests of the efficacy of P2W versus HF2W on parenting skills and family functioning were analyzed with pairwise t tests, within intervention type, and by baseline adjusted path models using FIML estimation in Mplus. Intervention effect sizes were estimated with Cohen’s d. Participants in P2W reported significant improvements in parental agency, parenting practices, supervision and family cohesion, and decreases in discipline problems and parent-child conflict. Compared to HF2W, P2W participants reported significantly larger increases in parental self-agency and positive parenting practices, and fewer child discipline problems. Most of these desired program effects for P2W approached medium size. Culturally adapted parenting interventions like P2W can effectively strengthen parenting practices and family functioning among urban AI families and help address their widespread need for targeted, culturally grounded programs.

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Notes

  1. We use the terms urban Indian center and urban Indian community, rather than urban American Indian or urban American Indian/Alaska Native, as they are commonly used by community members and organizations serving them.

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Correspondence to Stephen S. Kulis.

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Funding

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (award R01MD006110).

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The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

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All study procedures involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the researchers’ university Institutional Review Board and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments of comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Participants gave active informed consent through non-coercive procedures. They were informed that the questionnaire was part of a university research project, completing it was voluntary, and their answers were confidential. They could return a signed consent form and complete the questionnaire, or return an unsigned consent and blank questionnaire. Those who did not consent were eligible and encouraged to attend all workshops.

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Kulis, S.S., Ayers, S.L., Harthun, M.L. et al. Parenting in 2 Worlds: Effects of a Culturally Adapted Intervention for Urban American Indians on Parenting Skills and Family Functioning. Prev Sci 17, 721–731 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-016-0657-0

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