Aaron Ebata, PhD

Associate Professor, Social Development

Extension Specialist, Adolescent Development



Faculty Investigator

"Evaluating a Web-Based Resource for Parents of Young Children"

Summary:

This project will examine factors that influence the usage and effectiveness of the "Parent to Parent Project (P2P)" website, an online resource for parents of young children. The P2P Project is a collaborative effort of the University of Illinois Extension, The National Parent Information Network, the National Center for Supercomputer Applications, the University of Illinois Child Care Resource Service, and the Urbana (IL) Free Library. This site gives parents access to a selected set of research-based information, advice from experts, and support from other parents. It presents video clips of parents talking about real problems and solutions, interviews with parenting experts, and a message board where parents can communicate with each other.

Through its "virtual mentoring"and support, the P2P Project seeks to help parents by:

• "Normalizing" their experiences and helping them recognize that their difficult parenting situation may not be all that unusual, unique, or abnormal;
• Helping them develop realistic expectations about what is developmentally appropriate behavior;
• Giving them a chance to express their frustration or anxiety to others and to get help, advice, or support from others who have faced similar problems; and
• Helping them develop concrete problem-solving strategies and skills for managing anger, frustration, and anxiety by learning from the experience and advice of other parents and professionals.

Evaluating Online Delivery

Family researchers are beginning to develop the conceptual frameworks needed to evaluate multimedia programming on the Internet. This is becoming increasingly important as use of computers and access to the Internet grows, particularly among children and young adults who are future parents.

Results of online surveys conducted several months apart will be combined with online usage data to address the following questions:

1. Who accesses online parenting resources?
2. Does the Parent-to-Parent Project give useful information and how does it compare to other online and offline resources?
3. What kinds of individual and family factors influence the use and effectiveness of this program? Can effectiveness be explained using a “dose-response” model for online usage?

To determine if the program is being successfully disseminated, we will examine search engine strategies (e.g., Google) that assess relative rankings based on links and referrals from other sites. Impact of the effort will also be assessed by determining “centrality” or “prestige” of the site by examining patterns of referrals that are similar to sociometric diagrams. Particular attention will be paid to identifying the most appropriate universe for comparisons (e.g., all sites, all non-commercial sites, all educational sites, etc.)

Finally, to assess if P2P encourages “positive parenting”, a diverse set of parents (both novice and experience computer users) will be recruited to use the site over a two-month period. Parents will be randomly assigned to either the experimental group or wait-list control group. The latter group will begin using the program after the first group has completed its testing. Online surveys will be used at the beginning and end of the testing period to examine changes in knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behaviors (stress, parenting hassles, perceived social support, parental competence/efficacy, adoption of specific coping strategies, etc).

Online behavior will be tracked (with participants’ consent) to assess the amount of time each participant spent in different areas of the application. Comparisons will be made between pre- and post-test scores, as well as between the experimental group and wait-list control group. In addition, online behavior will be examined to see if particular areas of the program seemed to be more effective in influencing outcomes. Results from this study will be used to develop a web-based “manual” for program developers that will provide practical guidelines for online delivery of parenting resources.