Abstract
Long working hours and stressful urban lifestyles pose major challenges to family communication and well-being in Hong Kong. A community-based family intervention derived from a positive psychology framework, by using cooking and dining as a platform, was developed for improving family communication and well-being. Social workers and teachers from 31 social service units and schools in collaboration with an academic partner organized and conducted the intervention programs for 2,070 individuals from 973 families in a deprived district in Hong Kong. The participants were randomly assigned into the intervention or control group in a cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT). The core intervention covered one of five positive psychology themes: joy, gratitude, flow, savoring, and listening. Assessments at pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, and 4 and 12 weeks post-intervention showed improved family communication and well-being with sustainable effects up to 12 weeks. Positive changes in family happiness and family health were greater in the intervention group than in the control group. The savoring intervention had the most improved outcomes among the five themes. We concluded that this large-scale brief cRCT developed and conducted in real-world settings provided evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of a community-based family intervention. This study was registered under ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01796275).
Highlights
Long working hours and stressful urban lifestyles pose major challenges to families in establishing positive communication and maintaining family gatherings that are fundamental for the bonding of family members (Lizano et al, 2014; Winefield et al, 2014)
Excluded young participants aged < 12 years. aFamily communication was not assessed at T2. b∗p < 0.05; ∗∗p < 0.01; ∗∗∗p < 0.001. cEffect size (ES) = Cohen’s d
The results showed that the overall intervention program improved family communication (T3, T4), family health (T2, T4), family happiness (T2, T3, T4), and family harmony (T2, T4), supporting H1
Summary
Long working hours and stressful urban lifestyles pose major challenges to families in establishing positive communication and maintaining family gatherings that are fundamental for the bonding of family members (Lizano et al, 2014; Winefield et al, 2014). With regard to these concerns, the Happy Family Kitchen (HFK I) project was conducted before the present Happy Family Kitchen II (HFK II) project, to develop, implement, and evaluate a community-based family intervention program for improving family communication and family well-being in Hong Kong. To extend our previous work, we made three major improvements in the HFK II project: (a) We enhanced the practice model by replacing the health theme with the listening theme; (b) we enhanced the scientific rigor by adopting a cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT); and (c) we increased the public health impact by recruiting a larger sample from different districts in Hong Kong
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