Saseela Subaskaran
Ministry of Health,Sri Lanka
Title: Quality of parenting and effectiveness of an educational intervention to improve parenting among parents of 13-15 year old school going adolescents in Jaffna district
Biography
Biography: Saseela Subaskaran
Abstract
World Health Organization (WHO) identified parenting intervention as the first strategy to improve adolescent health. The objectives of the study were to develop and validate a tool to describe parenting in selected dimensions, to describe parenting and its associated factors among parents of 13 to 15 years old schooling adolescents and to assess the effectiveness of a parenting intervention. The study comprised of three components. Component one developed and validated a self administered tool to describe the patterns of parenting- Parenting Patterns Questionnaire (PPQ) by, item selection, expert consensus and item analysis. In the component 2, a descriptive cross sectional study was carried out among 1863 schooling adolescents, in 97 clusters, by multi stage cluster random sampling probability proportionate to a student population in different types of school and age group. In the third component, a Parenting Education Package was designed and a randomised control trial was conducted to assess the effectiveness of intervention with a sample of 73 parents each group. The data analysis was done using SPSS 15. The PPQ is a reliable and valid tool to assess parenting in selected dimensions (connection, control and respect) in Jaffna district. According to PPQ, parenting was good among 23.1% of parents. Factors such as age and sex of the child, educational level and occupation of parents, substance use of fathers and domestic violence were associated with quality of parenting. Improvement was achieved in parenting by intervention in 3 month period.