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Predictors of Participation in the Family Check-Up Program: a Randomized Trial of Yearly Services from Age 2 to 10 Years

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A Correction to this article was published on 27 March 2018

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Abstract

A key challenge of community-based prevention programs is engaging families in the context of services settings involving children and families. The Family Check-Up (FCU) program is designed to engage families in parenting support appropriate to their level of need by use of assessment-enhanced motivational interviewing. This study involved families screened for risk who were seeking services at women, infant, and children’s offices in three geographical regions (N = 731). Families in the randomized intervention group (N = 367) were offered the FCU yearly, from age 2 through 10. The results of multivariate modeling indicated that caregivers reporting high levels of perceived caregiving stress (i.e., depression, low parenting satisfaction, daily hassles) participated at a higher rate in two critical components (feedback and follow-up support interventions) of the FCU program over the 8-year trial period than caregivers reporting lesser degrees of stress. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of family-centered programs for the prevention of child behavior problems and directions for future research.

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Change history

  • 27 March 2018

    The original version of this article contained a mistake: The affiliations 1, 4 for author Thomas J. Dishion are incorrect and should be corrected to 2, 4.

Notes

  1. As a point of clarification, in previous FCU studies, participation in the feedback session has been used to define FCU “engagement” status (e.g., Connell, Dishion, Yasui, & Kavanagh, 2007; Dishion et al., 2014).

  2. The same pattern was found for in-person intervention time, F(2, 364) = 6.241, p ≤ 0.01 (VA: M = 1.40, SD = 1.67; OR: M = 2.41, SD = 3.34; PA: M = 3.34, SD = 5.71) where only VA and PA differed but Charlottesville was significantly lower than both Pittsburgh and Eugene on number of intervention contacts from the FCU provider, F(2, 364) = 5.865, p ≤ 0.01 (VA: M = 1.28, SD = 1.64; OR: M = 2.84, SD = 3.77; PA: M = 2.71, SD = 4.53).

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant DA016110 to Thomas Dishion, Daniel Shaw, and Melvin Wilson. Justin Smith and Cady Berkel were supported by National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention grant DP006255. Justin Smith was also supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant DA027828 to C. Hendricks Brown. The authors also gratefully thank Charlotte Winter and Shannon McGill for assistance with the data management, the Early Steps team in Eugene, Pittsburgh, and Charlottesville, and the families who have participated in the study.

Conflict of Interest

Thomas Dishion is the developer of the Family Check-Up program. Justin Smith, Cady Berkel, Katherine Hails, Daniel Shaw, and Melvin Wilson have no conflicts of interest or financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

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All procedures performed in this study were approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the Arizona State University, the University of Oregon, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Virginia and were in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Smith, J.D., Berkel, C., Hails, K.A. et al. Predictors of Participation in the Family Check-Up Program: a Randomized Trial of Yearly Services from Age 2 to 10 Years. Prev Sci 19, 652–662 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-016-0679-7

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