Parents' Consumer Preferences for Early Childhood Behavioral Intervention in Primary Care

Abstract

Objective: Early childhood parenting interventions are increasingly delivered in primary care, but parental engagement with those interventions is often suboptimal. We sought to better understand parents' preferences for the content and delivery method of behavioral health guidance in pediatric primary care and to determine the relationship of those preferences with demographic characteristics, child behavior problems, and parenting style. Methods: Participants were 396 parents of young children recruited from primary care offices. We collected measures of parental preferences (including behavioral topics, intervention strategies, and methods of delivery) for behavioral intervention in primary care, child behavior symptoms, parenting style, and demographic characteristics. Descriptive statistics were used to identify parents' most preferred behavioral topics and intervention delivery methods. We used a hierarchical regression approach to determine whether parenting style predicted parents' preferences beyond demographic and child-level factors. Results: Nearly all parents (96%) endorsed a behavioral topic (e.g., aggression) as important. Most preferred to receive intervention during routine medical appointments. Child behavior problems correlated with parents' overall interest in behavioral guidance, but clinically significant symptoms did not differentiate interest in any single topic. Socioeconomic factors and negative parenting practices predicted some parental preferences. Notably, lax parenting generally predicted higher interest in behavioral intervention, whereas hostile and physically controlling parenting predicted lower interest. Conclusion: Most parents are interested in behavioral guidance as part of primary care, but their preferences for the content and delivery of that guidance vary by known socioeconomic, child, and parenting risk factors. Tailoring intervention to parents' preferences may increase engagement with available interventions.

Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Multidimensional Assessment of Parenting Scale.

“…The MAPS scores have demonstrated strong psychometric properties, including high reliability and initial support for validity in longitudinal analyses, and became a useful tool for simultaneously assessing both positive (e.g., warmth) and negative (e.g., harshness) aspects of parenting across developmental stages. For instance, the prominent links between broadband positive/negative parenting and children's externalizing/internalizing problems have been verified among early childhood (3-7 years old), middle childhood (8-12 years old), and adolescence (13-17 years old) (e.g., Parent & Forehand, 2017;Riley et al, 2019). Given the assumption that parenting norms vary across cultures (Leung et al, 1998;Smith & Dishion, 2013), it is necessary to explore the reliability and validity of the MAPS among parents in countries outside of the United States (U.S.)-both as a means of accurately assessing parenting practices across cultures and of facilitating cross-cultural research on parenting and child development.…”

Parents' Preferences for Behavioral Services in Primary Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Participants completed a version of the Behavioral Information Preferences Scale (BIPS), a measure of parents' preferences for the topics and delivery modality of behavioral guidance in primary care. The BIPS was initially developed for the prepandemic reference study 6 and subsequently psychometrically evaluated using the same sample. 9 The BIPS consists of 39 five-point Likert-type items.…”

“…Depending on the nature of the data, we conducted t tests, χ 2 tests, and Mann–Whitney U tests to contrast the current sample with the prepandemic reference sample. 6 To summarize responses to individual BIPS items, we calculated the percentage of participants who endorsed a 4 or 5 (e.g., “important” or “very important”). We conducted Mann–Whitney U tests to test whether responses on individual BIPS items were significantly different between the samples.…”

Development and initial validation of a measure of parents’ preferences for behavioral counseling in primary care.

“…We developed the BIPS as part of a larger project examining parents' attitudes toward behavioral services in primary care (Riley et al, 2019). We were interested in creating a measure of parents' interest in specific behavioral topics, the perceived helpfulness of behavioral supports, and potential modes of intervention delivery.…”