Parent-child Communication and Health-risk Behavior

NCT ID: NCT02330666

Last Updated: 2015-10-02

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 604 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2004-08-31
• Study Completion Date: 2010-12-31

Brief Summary

Engaging in health-risk behaviors such as tobacco and alcohol use put youth at risk for health problems that may compromise their futures and are extremely costly to society. Positive parent-child communication, characterized by openness, satisfaction with the family, caring, and effective problem-solving, has been found to be protective against a youth's involvement in health-risk behaviors. To promote positive adult-youth communication, in earlier work we developed, tested, and found efficacious an intervention, Mission Possible: Parents and Kids Who Listen (MP). This study is designed to test the following hypotheses: (a) Adults and youth who participate in MP will demonstrate more positive communication when compared with adults who did not participate; (b) Youth who participate in MP will have a lower incidence of health-risk behavior when compared with youth who did not participate; and (c) Positive adult-youth communication will mediate childhood health-risk behavior in the presence of risk processes that predict participation. The experimental design is a 2-group (intervention and comparison) pre-test repeated measures design with six waves of data collection over three years and two booster sessions of the intervention. Elementary school and community centers in Madison and Chicago served as recruitment sites for parent-child dyads.

Conditions

Parent-Child Relations

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: PREVENTION
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Comparison

Standard care

Group Type: NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Intervention

Communication skills training Mission Possible: Parents \& Kids Who Listen

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Mission Possible: Parents & Kids Who Listen

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

MP is a 12-hour, 6-session, manualized skills training program with 2 boosters. Behavioral strategies teach adults and youth to communicate with one another emphasizing youth's need for flexible family boundaries, emotional closeness, and adults as resources. Dyads attend together. Sessions begin with relaxation exercises, review of the prior week's lessons and homework, and examination of success and failure in trying communication techniques. New concepts are introduced using didactic videotaped presentations. Lively, interactive, developmentally appropriate group exercises follow reflective of ethnic diversity that are reinforced with handouts and encouragement to try them at home. Week-by-week content covers: Developmental Changes; Self-Esteem; Communicating What You Want; Listening to What the Other Wants; Solving Conflicts; and Letting Go. The booster sessions are 2 hours in length and update developmental concepts; 5 basic listening skills; and 6 conflict resolution steps.

Interventions

Mission Possible: Parents & Kids Who Listen

MP is a 12-hour, 6-session, manualized skills training program with 2 boosters. Behavioral strategies teach adults and youth to communicate with one another emphasizing youth's need for flexible family boundaries, emotional closeness, and adults as resources. Dyads attend together. Sessions begin with relaxation exercises, review of the prior week's lessons and homework, and examination of success and failure in trying communication techniques. New concepts are introduced using didactic videotaped presentations. Lively, interactive, developmentally appropriate group exercises follow reflective of ethnic diversity that are reinforced with handouts and encouragement to try them at home. Week-by-week content covers: Developmental Changes; Self-Esteem; Communicating What You Want; Listening to What the Other Wants; Solving Conflicts; and Letting Go. The booster sessions are 2 hours in length and update developmental concepts; 5 basic listening skills; and 6 conflict resolution steps.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Adults and youth must be English speakers
• Youth must be 10 years old

Exclusion Criteria

• Severe mental or physical illness that could preclude involvement in data collection procedures
• Family plans to move from the metropolitan areas prior to study completion

• Minimum Eligible Age: 10 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Loyola University Chicago

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Iowa State University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of Wisconsin, Madison

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Susan K Riesch, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Other Identifiers

2003-352

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id