The New Beginnings Podcast: Brief Audio Intervention for Parents From Divorced and Separated Families

"The New Beginnings Podcast: A Small-scale Randomized Controlled Trial of a Parenting Podcast to Improve Outcomes for Children From Divorced Families"

The goal of this study is to learn if the New Beginnings Podcast can help children whose parents are going through a divorce or separation. The podcast shares parenting strategies that have been shown to help in past in-person and online programs. This study will also look at how easy it is for parents to use the podcast and how helpful they find it.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

1. Do parents find the podcast easy to use, helpful, and relevant?
2. Does listening to the podcast improve children's mental health?
3. Does the podcast help parents build stronger relationships with their children and reduce conflict between parents?

Researchers will compare families who use the podcast to families on a waitlist to see if the podcast makes a difference.

Participants will:

1. Listen to podcast episodes over the course of the study
2. Answer questions about their experiences with the podcast
3. Complete surveys about their child's well-being, their parenting, and family relationships

This study will include 80 parents and their children.

The adult (parent) participants who are enrolled in the randomized clinical trial will receive a podcast-based program that teaches several parenting skills that have demonstrated efficacy and effectiveness for improving child adjustment after divorce in the short- and long- term in previous randomized trials. The anticipated risks are considered minimal and reasonable in relation to the anticipated benefit of an intervention tailored to help after separation/divorce.

The child participants (aged 11-18, offspring of parent participants) will receive no direct benefits of participation but may receive indirect benefits from the proposed research through podcast-induced improvements in their parent's parenting (as described above).

Inclusion Criteria:

For Parents, eligibility criteria are:

1. divorced, separated, separated but never married, or divorcing/separating within the last two years;
2. one or more children between the ages of 8-18 years old;
3. have in-person contact with their child(ren) at least three hours per week or have at least one overnight visit every other week;
4. have access to a smartphone with internet that can play audio files;
5. English speaking.

For children, eligibility criteria are:

1. have a parent who is participating in the trial;
2. be between the ages of 8-18 and
3. have access to a computer to complete assessments. If a parent has more than one child aged 8-18 interested in participating, we will randomly select one child to ensure independence of responses.

Exclusion Criteria:

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