Happy Family Kitchen II: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial of a Community-Based Family Intervention for Enhancing Family Communication and Well-being in Hong Kong

Abstract

Long working hours and stressful urban lifestyles pose major challenges to family communication and well-being in Hong Kong. A community-based family intervention derived from a positive psychology framework, by using cooking and dining as a platform, was developed for improving family communication and well-being. Social workers and teachers from 31 social service units and schools in collaboration with an academic partner organized and conducted the intervention programs for 2,070 individuals from 973 families in a deprived district in Hong Kong. The participants were randomly assigned into the intervention or control group in a cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT). The core intervention covered one of five positive psychology themes: joy, gratitude, flow, savoring, and listening. Assessments at pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, and 4 and 12 weeks post-intervention showed improved family communication and well-being with sustainable effects up to 12 weeks. Positive changes in family happiness and family health were greater in the intervention group than in the control group. The savoring intervention had the most improved outcomes among the five themes. We concluded that this large-scale brief cRCT developed and conducted in real-world settings provided evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of a community-based family intervention. This study was registered under ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01796275).

Test–retest reliability and validity of a single-item Self-reported Family Happiness Scale in Hong Kong Chinese: findings from Hong Kong Jockey Club FAMILY Project

“…The improvement for family happiness at one-month and three-month follow-up was significantly greater in the intervention group than in the control group with a small effect size (Cohen effect size d = 0.14 and 0.18, respectively), indicating that SFHS-1 is responsive to change attributable to the intervention. These results have been published elsewhere [20].…”

“…After excluding 809 children (aged 6 to 11) and those who declined to be assessed, 1261 valid questionnaires (Group A: n=419; Group B: n=409; Group C (control group): n=433) were collected. Baseline demographic information and outcome measures in the three groups were published elsewhere (Appendix table) [37,20]. The mean score of the SFHS-1 in the control group was 7.27 at baseline and 7.22 at one-month follow-up.…”

“…Tea gathering session covered topics unrelated to the intervention, such as arts and crafts workshops. Details of the Happy Family Kitchen II were reported elsewhere [20].…”

“…Family happiness can be enhanced by spending time with family members and building connection with friends and relatives [14]. Our previous community-based family intervention programs to promote positive family communication have shown remarkable effectiveness on improving family happiness [19][20][21], indicating the responsiveness of the SFHS-1, which is the ability of a measurement to detect change over time attributable to the intervention [22]. These programs were developed with cooking, dining and learning as the platforms to facilitate positive communication and interaction among family members.…”

The development of a family resilience‐strengthening programme for families in a South African rural community

“…Communication (conveying and receiving messages between individuals both verbally and nonverbally) within families enhances problem-solving abilities during crises (Walsh, 2016a). The profound effect of family communication on family functioning has been established in several family-related studies (for example, Black & Lobo, 2008;High & Sharp, 2015;Ho et al, 2016;Prouty, Fischer, Purdom, Cobos, & Helmeke, 2016;Schrodt & Ledbetter, 2007).…”