Latino youth currently comprise more than one-fifth of the US youth population (Mather &Foxen, 2010), yet this sizeable group of the nation s future adults lags alarmingly behind non-Latino youth in academic achievement. The proposed program, Padres Preparados: A Cultural Adaptation of an Evidence-Based Parenting Intervention for Latino Families (Prepared Parents) aims to address the Latino achievement gap at an early and critical stage through a parent intervention program designed to increase school readiness skills in preschool age children. The content of the program will be based on parenting skills specified by the evidenced-based Oregon Model of Parent Management Training (PMTO), which emphasizes five positive parenting skills: skill building;effective discipline;monitoring;problem-solving;and positive involvement. Padres Preparados is also based on research on the benefits of early childhood education and positive parent involvement in building school readiness skills. Parent involvement has been shown to play a crucial role in children s academic success, but Latino parents may hesitate to participate in parent activities because joint school-home programs are not culturally sensitive. To fully engage Latino parents in their children s education, interventions must be adapted in a way that takes into account their culture, language, and context. In fact, the more closely an intervention is adapted to a particular cultural background, the more effective it is. Padres Preparados will be developed specifically for Spanish-speaking Latino parents, adapting PMTO-based content to address the language, cultural values, and unique contexts of this population using the Cultural Adaptation Process model and the Ecological Validity Model. An interactive, user-friendly, multimedia presentation of culturally adapted PMTO-based parent training will be developed for Latino parents of preschool-age children;the product will be available to parents online or on DVD. Social validity data will be collected via focus groups with Latino parents and preschool staff members, observations at preschool settings, and meetings with Latino community leaders. These data will inform the development of Module 1 of Padres Preparados, which will focus on positive parent involvement in building children s pre-literacy skills. The remaining five modules of this interactive, user-friendly program will be developed in Phase II, along with professional development materials for preschool staff members that will allow them to serve as parent mentors. Following product development, a quasi-experimental pre-post design will be used to assess the usability and feasibility of this intervention with a sample of 50 Spanish-speaking Latino parents who have at least one child currently enrolled in a pre-K program. We will evaluate parental stress, parental self-efficacy and satisfaction, knowledge, and beliefs about the usability and functionality of the program.
The aim of this proposal is to develop a skill-building multimedia Spanish-language intervention, Padres Preparados: A Cultural Adaptation of an Evidence Based Parenting Intervention for Latino Families (Prepared Parents), accessible to Latino parents through Head Start and other preschool facilities. The program, designed to be delivered by preschool staff, will provide parenting and school-readiness skills, which are early and crucial steps toward closing the current achievement gap. A feasibility test of the program will be conducted with parents of children in Head Start programs in Oregon and Utah.
