Parents Matter!: Interventions to Promote Effective Parent-Child Communication

Parents Matter!: Interventions to Promote Effective Parent-Child Communication About Sex and Sexual Risk Among African American Families

Parents Matter is a community-based project whose goal it is to develop and test an intervention designed to promote effective parent-child communication about sexuality in order to promote sexual health among adolescents.

Participants in the intervention are African American parents or guardians who have children in the 4th or 5th grade that are 12 or younger. Recruitment was done through schools, housing authorities, community based organizations, and churches. Participants were randomly assigned to participate in one of three interventions delivered by community based interventionists. The enhanced sexuality communication intervention consists of five 2.5 hour sessions conducted over 5 weeks with booster sessions at 12 and 24 months post-intervention. The full sexual communication intervention focuses on general parenting skills and sexual communication skills using a variety of presentation modalities: group discussion, video, and role-plays. The brief sexual communication intervention consists of a single 2.5 hour session in which parents are provided with information on general parenting skills and sexual communication skills. Thus, this intervention seeks to provide the same information as the full sexual communication intervention but in a condensed format with little group participation. The control intervention is a single 2.5 hour session focusing on general child health issues such as diet and exercise rather than parenting and sexual communication.

Inclusion Criteria:

The eligibility criteria for the parent-child dyad are as follows:

• The parent or guardian must be African-American
• The parent or guardian must be the primary caregiver for a child in 4th or 5th grade who is 12 or younger at the time of the 1st assessment.
• The parent or guardian and the child must have lived together continuously for at least the past 3 years and the child must spend most nights (5 or more) with the parent or guardian.
• The parent or guardian and the child must both speak English.