Assessing Change in Families Following the Home‐Start Parenting Program: Clinical Significance and Predictors of Change

• Author: Peter Prinzie,Maja Deković,Jessica J. Asscher,Jo M.A. Hermanns
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2008.00505.x
• Published date: 01 July 2008
• Date: 01 July 2008

Assessing Change in Families Following the

Home-Start Parenting Program: Clinical Significance

and Predictors of Change

Jessica J. Asscher Maja Dekovic

´Peter Prinzie Jo M.A. Hermanns*

Abstract: The aim of the present study was to examine whether improvements obtained after a home-based parent-

ing intervention reflected meaningful and significant changes for a sample of Dutch mothers. The results showed

that Home-Start mothers demonstrated reliable changes in well-being and enhanced parenting behaviors compared

to both a comparison and a norm group of mothers. At posttest, a substantial number (39 – 84%) of the Home-

Start mothers functioned at a level equivalent to that of a community group. The most reliable improvement was

found with mothers experiencing the most severe problems at pretest, whereas the most recovery was reported for

mothers with the fewest problems at pretest.

Key Words: clinically significant change, Home-Start, mothers, parenting behavior, parenting support program, reli-

able change.

Background and Significance

The first 5 years of life are of crucial importance for

the development of both a sense of emotional security

and the acquisition of self-regulation skills later in life

(Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman, 2002). Parenting behavior

has been treated as a theoretical and empirical determi-

nant of emotional well-being in early childhood and

beyond (Papp, Cummings, & Schermerhorn, 2004).

In general, parenting styles that encompass unpredict-

able parental behavior, lack of responsiveness and

warmth, harsh discipline, and a lack of supervision of

the child’s activities have been linked to a host of nega-

tive outcomes for the child (Olson, Ceballo, & Park,

2002). These negative child outcomes include the

development of antisocial behavior, social rejection,

academic failure, and membership in deviant peer

groups later on in life (Ehrensaft et al., 2003).

Given the well-documented association between

parenting competence and child outcomes (see, e.g.,

Belsky, 1984), numerous early intervention and par-

enting support programs have been developed and

implemented to counter potential negative outcomes

and to support healthy developmental progress in

families with young children. The long-term goal of

many clinical interventions conducted by (mental

health) professionals has been to ameliorate family

dysfunction and behavioral problems of the child

(Osofsky, 1998). In addition to clinical programs,

a large number of home-visiting parenting support

programs have been developed. These home-based

parenting support programs show particular promise

in that the method of delivering services to families

in their own homes offers opportunities for more

personalized service, which not only aids families

but also increases program-retention rates (see re-

views by Bilukha et al., 2005; Diamond & Josephson,

2005). Moreover, it is hypothesized that parents

feel more at ease in their own homes (McGuigan,

*Jessica J. Asscher is a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences in the Research Centre Psychosocial Development in Context at the Utrecht University,

P.O. Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands (j.j.asscher@uu.nl). Maja Dekovic

´is a full professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences in the Research Centre Psy-

chosocial Development in Context at the Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands (m.dekovic@uu.nl). Peter Prinzie is an associate

professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences in the Research Centre Psychosocial Development in Context at the Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht,

The Netherlands (p.prinzie@uu.nl). Jo M.A. Hermanns is a full professor in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box

94208, 1090 GE Amsterdam, The Netherlands (j.m.a.hermanns@uva.nl).

Family Relations, 57 (July 2008), 351–364. Blackwell Publishing.

Copyright 2008 by the National Council on Family Relations.