New Parent Support Program evaluation: Phase 2

Background and Goals:

Phase 1 of this project evaluated certain aspects of the New Parent Support Program offered to at-risk families on military bases.

I contributed to Phase 2, which entailed several component projects to provide a more comprehensive examination of why home visits may or may not be associated with child abuse.

Both phases of the project served to provide information to partners about the efficacy of the program and provide suggestions for possible improvements.

Method:

3 main component projects:

Qualitative coding of descriptions of home visits
Interviews with home visitors (nurses/social workers)
Common components analysis of existing parenting program curricula

Key Findings:

Findings were presented to partners through a formal report and included information on themes mentioned in home visit notes, experiences of home visitors during visits, and results of a Common Components Analysis of aspects of parenting programs that may be useful for child abuse reduction.

Impact:

Findings from this set of projects helped to further understand the existing effect of the New Parent Support Program and provide suggestions for future directions.
Partners could use results to make improvements to the program where applicable.

Personal takeaways:

Using multiple approaches at once can help to distill findings across different settings
Clarity of descriptive language is important, especially when coordinating among multiple coders
Iterating over dense information can be a useful strategy in research; coding categories may seem to fit well until taken in the context of a fresh look at the data.