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Recruitment and Retention of High-Risk Families into a Preventive Parent Training Intervention

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Abstract

This article describes the process of developing, implementing, and evaluating recruitment and retention strategies for an eight session preventive parenting program designed for high-risk minority parents from low-income inner-city communities. The program was offered in both Spanish and English to a sample of 142 one- and two-parent families (78% Mexican immigrant or Mexican American, 15% African American, and 9% Anglo, Native American, and other). Recruitment and retention strategies resulted in a 70% participation rate with 48% of the families attending 5-8 sessions and 22% attending 1-4 sessions. Attendance rates were higher for married and cohabiting mothers than for single mothers and for Spanish speaking mothers compared to English-speaking Latino mothers. New categories are presented to improve future reporting of recruitment and retention data.

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Dumka, L.E., Garza, C.A., Roosa, M.W. et al. Recruitment and Retention of High-Risk Families into a Preventive Parent Training Intervention. The Journal of Primary Prevention 18, 25–39 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024626105091

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