Preliminary evaluation of the What You Do Matters curriculum in community-based settings

Abstract

Preventive parent education programs are an increasingly popular means to increase parents’ knowledge of child development, improve parenting practices, and foster better social, emotional, and educational outcomes for children. This study examined the extent to which participation in What You Do Matters (WYDM; Parents as Teachers National Center, Inc., 2018) is associated with increases in caregivers' knowledge, improved parenting, and enhanced parental self-efficacy. Naturally occurring site-related differences in implementation were also examined as potential moderators of impact. Ninety-four families attended up to six classes that comprise WYDM. Participants completed caregiver knowledge surveys before and after each class and they completed a caregiver behavior change and self-efficacy survey after completion of the program. Participants demonstrated large increases in knowledge about children’s brain development (t = 8.86, p <.0001, d = 0.97), language development (t = 10.69, p <.0001, d = 0.81), and social-emotional development (t = 6.88, p <.0001, d = 0.95). Caregivers also demonstrated moderate increases in knowledge of children’s motor development (t = 5.80, p= < 0.0001, d = 0.95) and small increases in knowledge about children’s cognitive development (t = 3.45; p = < 0.001; d = 0.24). Most participants reported large increases in effectual parent/child interactions and high parental self-efficacy upon program completion. Significant Time by Site interactions on caregivers’ knowledge of child development (Fs = 7.56 to 19.95, ps = < 0.01) suggest that participants’ learning gains may be moderated by differences in intensity of implementation, parent educator effectiveness, demographic characteristics of participants, and/or the match between language of instruction and language dominance of participants.