SBIR-STTR Award

Half of all marriages end in divorce and many others suffer periods of acute stress. The impact on couples and children is substantial. Intervention efforts in this area are increasingly focusing on marital education; that is, teaching couples social-communication skills and attuning expectations to avoid the negative communication patterns that tend to erode satisfaction in the relationship over time. Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program, or PREP, is a leading empirically-based program in this area. The program has also been adapted for use with special populations for whom marriage expectations are closely linked to circumstances and/or values. Researchers agree that training must separately address groups based on, for example, religious values, socioeconomic status, and military life. Another large and unique group is foster, kinship, and adoptive parents. These couples are subjected to extraordinary stressors on their marriage: trying to manage very disturbed child behavior, dealing with the care system, relating to birth parents, and perceptions of being a different type of family. The stability of the marriage is also critical to maintaining the placement of the child. We propose developing an interactive Web-based version of PREP that specifically addresses the needs and challenges of this population. In Phase I we will develop the first lecture of the training on recognizing communication patterns in relationships. In addition to the multimedia training, the module will include an interactive assessment component and an interactive coaching journal. The unit will be tested with a national sample of foster, kinship, and adoptive couples on measures of patterns of communication in relationships, content knowledge, and relationship confidence.

Thesaurus Terms:
Internet, child foster care /adoption, computer assisted instruction, education evaluation /planning, educational resource design /development child rearing, communication behavior, computer graphics /printing, computer system design /evaluation, interactive multimedia, parent offspring interaction, training clinical research, focus group, human subject

The purpose of this project is to develop and evaluate a specialized online version of a marital education program for resource (i.e., foster, kinship, and adoptive) parents. The program, called Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP), is a well-researched, highly effective, and widely used curriculum that has been adapted already for use with certain select populations, though not specifically with resource couples. Foster, kinship, and adoptive couples face extraordinary challenges that can, and do, have a large impact on their marriages. Standard family contexts and dynamics for intervention do not generalize to these couples. However, marital education tailored to the special needs and circumstances of these parents could provide them with much needed social-communication skills to avoid negative interaction patterns in their marital relationship and to steer their expectations into a healthy framework. In Phase I we successfully developed and tested the first two modules from the PREP program. Findings provided strong support for the efficacy of the online version with this population. In Phase II we will produce another 13 modules adapted to this population to complete the program. We will evaluate the full, finished program with a national sample of 100 foster, adoptive, and kinship couples on measures of knowledge, communication and conflict management skills, a variety of indicators of a healthy marriage, and a test of parent and child adjustment. Fittingly, the recruitment of subjects, as well as the implementation and testing of the training intervention, will all be done online.

Public Health Relevance:
Subjects participating in this project will gain important information and skills to help them understand and manage the unique challenges of married life for foster, adoptive, and kinship couples. As a result, the quality of the marriage, parenting, family life, the resource child's adjustment, and the stability of the placement could improve.

Public Health Relevance Statement:
Project Narrative Subjects participating in this project will gain important information and skills to help them understand and manage the unique challenges of married life for foster, adoptive, and kinship couples. As a result, the quality of the marriage, parenting, family life, the resource child's adjustment, and the stability of the placement could improve.

Project Terms:
0-11 years old; Active Follow-up; Address; Arm; Behavior; Belief System; Birth; Child; Child Behavior; Child Youth; Children (0-21); Communication; Conflict; Conflict (Psychology); Couples; Curriculum; Data Banks; Data Bases; Databank, Electronic; Databanks; Database, Electronic; Databases; Disadvantaged; Education; Education for Intervention; Educational Curriculum; Educational Intervention; Educational aspects; Elements; Equilibrium; Evaluation Studies; Event; Exercise; Exercise, Physical; Face; Family; Family dynamics; Focus Groups; Fostering; Friendships; Human, Child; Individual; Instruction Intervention; Intervention; Intervention Strategies; Journals; Knowledge; Lectures; Lectures (PT); Lectures [Publication Type]; Life; Magazine; Marital Relationships; Marriage; Measures; Methods and Techniques; Methods, Other; Multimedia; Multimedium; On-Line Systems; Online Systems; Outcome; Outcome Measure; Parenting; Parenting behavior; Parents; Parturition; Pattern; Perception; Phase; Population; Prevention; Prevention program; Problem Solving; Programs (PT); Programs [Publication Type]; Relaxation; Religion and Spirituality; Research; Research Resources; Resources; SCHED; Sampling; Schedule; Site; Special Population; Stress; Techniques; Technology; Testing; Time; Training; Training Intervention; Training Programs; Upper arm; Visual; Writing; abuse neglect; authority; balance; balance function; care systems; children; clinical data repository; clinical data warehouse; cultural competence; data repository; expectation; facial; family structure/dynamics; fighting; follow-up; forgiveness; foster care; improved; innovate; innovation; innovative; instructional intervention; interventional strategy; lectures; named group; neglect and abuse; online computer; programs; public health relevance; relational database; religious; satisfaction; sexual relationship; skills; social communication; stem; systems of care; usability; web based; web site; youngster