Evaluation of an early, mass media parental support intervention

Abstract

This article reports on the evaluation of Parents Magazine, an age-paced newsletter distributed to parents starting with the birth of their children. The evaluation was carried out after the newsletter's first year of circulation. Measures were taken of reader satisfaction as well as impact on parents' knowledge, attitudes and behavior toward education and use of community resources. Findings indicated that the newsletter's penetration of families and their natural milieu was strong but that it had a limited impact. However, the parents who received the newsletter developed more positive attitudes toward community resources. The articles discusses the implication of these findings for future research.

Online programs as tools to improve parenting: A meta-analytic review

“…Visitor numbers to parenting websites run as high as hundreds of thousands per month (Brent, 2009;O'Connor & Madge, 2004;Sarkadi & Bremberg, 2005). The wish to upscale parenting programs and the phenomenon of mass media parenting interventions are not new (Laurendeau, Gagnon, Desjardins, Perreault, & Kishchuk, 1991;Sanders & Montgomery, 2000;Schoenwald & Hoagwood, 2001;Self-Brown & Whitaker, 2008;Turner & Sanders, 2006). However, in comparison to traditional media like hardcopy newsletters and television broadcasts, the Internet enables new, highly interactive opportunities for communication between parents and professionals (Amichai-Hamburger, 2008;D'Alessandro & Dosa, 2001).…”