Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMPOWER (Empowering parents through the development of an online evidence-based mental health promotion school engagement resource)
Berichtszeitraum: 2015-07-06 bis 2017-07-05
It is well established that parents play a significant role in children’s social and emotional learning. Developing social and emotional skills requires a collaboration between the school and home as these are two of the key social contexts within which social and emotional skills are developed. The majority of work on engaging parents in children’s social and emotional development has focused on traditional methods such as face-to-face group-based parenting programmes. Although, a number of these programmes have demonstrated significant improvements for children and parents, there are several issues around engaging parents including psychological barriers such as stigma, lack of confidence, or concern about being judged and practical issues such as transport to, childcare, financial difficulties, inconvenient timing. In addition, the majority of parenting interventions address behavioural problems and conduct disorders as opposed to enhancing children’s competencies. EMPOWER sought to address these issues by developing an online application aimed at enhancing parental engagement in the development of children’s social and emotional competencies. EMPOWER adopted a systematic approach to developing an evidence-based intervention. An online application aimed at supporting parental engagement introduces simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability to a largely untapped area of research.
During the phase of content development, the researcher went on a one month secondment to Harvard Graduate School of Education and collaborated with Prof Stephanie Jones on the development of evidence-based strategies to enhance children’s social and emotional competencies. The researcher also collaborated with the Department of Industrial Design at the University of Twente on the integration of persuasive technology design and gaming techniques to enhance user experience. The CeHRes Framework, which was developed at the University of Twente was used as a guideline to plan, coordinate and execute the participatory development process of the app. A series of participatory workshops and focus groups were carried out with parents (both mothers and fathers) and their children in order to ascertain end-users’ views about the draft content and its potential in supporting parental engagement in children’s learning. The results from this creative design phase was used to refine the content and style of the app so that it performed better at meeting the needs of both parents and children.
The researcher collaborated with a creative designer and software developer on the development of the app. The app was developed to run on both iOS and Android platforms and was developed in both Dutch and English. Usability testing was performed using a Living Lab approach with parents and children from two schools in the Netherlands. Observation methods, thinking aloud and questionnaires were used to collect data related to the apps functionality and user satisfaction including their expectations, frustrations and difficulties. Results were used to further enhance the online application.
The results from the meta-analysis of school-based interventions is currently being written up and will be submitted for publication. In addition, the results from the development and usability testing phase of the app are also being written up for publication. Results from the usability testing indicate the potential of this app in (i) supporting parental engagement in children’s learning (ii) enhancing children’s social and emotional skills and (iii) enhancing parental knowledge on the strategies that can be used to support children’s social and emotional development. This app is designed for children aged 7-8 years. Using the same format, a similar apps can be developed for younger and older children in primary school.