Many parents have difficulty parenting during their children's adolescence, and many find it especially difficult to address sexual matters. Yet parents can have a large influence on their adolescents' sexual risk behaviors. Nevertheless, there has been little scientific research to determine whether parental influence can be harnessed to promote adolescents' health by intervening to help parents deal with their adolescents more effectively. Reaching parents can be a challenge, especially for programs in community settings where parents must make a special effort to attend. A promising location to reach parents is their place of employment. Worksite-based programs have been successful in changing other health-related behaviors. Although some employers provide programs to address family issues, few have been evaluated. We propose to develop and evaluate a work-site based parenting 2program for parents of adolescents. Built on principles derived from a theoretical model of behavior change, the program focuses on parent-adolescent relationships, with an emphasis on reduction of sexual risk and associated behaviors such as substance use. The program will teach skills for communication, monitoring, and involvement. It will be presented by two facilitators in 7 one- hour weekly sessions during lunch hour to groups of 12-15 parents. We will conduct a randomized, controlled trial of this intervention at five worksites. A waiting list control group will receive the program one year after the intervention ends. Parents in the intervention and control groups, and their adolescents (in grades 7-12), will complete surveys pre- intervention and at 0, 3, and 12 months post-intervention. The sample includes 623 parents and an estimated 866 adolescents.
Our specific aims are: (1) To determine whether a worksite-based parenting program can reduce adolescents' sexual risk and associated behaviors such as misuse of alcohol (2) To assess the program's effects on parenting behaviors, the parent-child relationship, and communication, as perceived by parents and adolescents, and on adolescent behaviors other than risk behaviors. (3) To determine whether theoretically important components of our behavior change model predict changes in behaviors targeted by the intervention. (4) To explore differences in the effectiveness of the program for different types of parents and adolescents. (5) To estimate the cost of providing the program and to calculate cost-effectiveness ratios for employers and employees.
