Table 2.
Measures of parent and family characteristics, participation barriers, program factors and contextual factors
| Variable | Measure | Data collection | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source | Collecteda | ||
| Parent and family factors | |||
| Demographics | Parent and child age and gender, family structure and size, parent education, employment status, household income, government benefits, language spoken at home | Parent | Baseline |
| Life event stress | List of Threatening Experiences (LTE-Q): 7-item yes/no list of stressful life events in last 12 months (Brugha and Cragg 1990), e.g. “You had a major financial difficulty”. Total score 0 to 7 | Parent | Baseline |
| Parent global self-efficacy | 1 item on a 5-point scale, overall efficacy as a parent (Zubrick et al. 2014), “Overall, as a parent, do you feel that you are…?”, e.g. “a better than average parent”, producing a score between 1 and 5 | Parent | Baseline |
| Psychosocial distress | Kessler-6 (K6): 6-item psychosocial screener on a 5-point scale assessing emotional distress in the last 4 weeks (Kessler et al. 2002). “About how often did you feel…?”, e.g. “nervous”. Total score 0 to 24 | Parent | Baseline |
| Seeing other services | Use of early childhood services: 1 item “Have you or your child seen anyone other than your maternal and child health nurse in relation to your own health or your child’s health or behaviour?” | Parent | Baseline |
| Participation barriers | |||
| Family | Family barriers to attendance: 4 yes/no items; e.g. difficulties with child health | Parent | Post |
| Logistical | Logistic barriers to attendance: 4 yes/no items; e.g. difficulties with transport | Parent | Post |
| Program | Program barriers to attendance: 3 yes/no items; e.g. difficulty relating to other parents in the group | Parent | Post |
| Program factors | |||
| Group climate | 6 items: level of rapport, time management, achievement of session goals, group cohesiveness, active participation by the group (5-point scale: 1 = much less than expected, 5 = much better than expected) and disruption of session by unanticipated events (5-point scale: 1 = none, 5 = extensive disruption) | Facilitator | Weekly |
| Contact with parent between sessions: 1 item (yes/no) | Facilitator | Weekly | |
| Facilitator | Demographics: age, gender, qualifications, experience in early childhood sector/parenting support | Facilitator | Pre-training |
| Confidence in skills/competency: 6 skills, e.g. “Identifying specific needs of families” on a 5-point scale from 1 = ‘no level of skill/knowledge in the area’ to 5 = ‘advanced level of skill/knowledge’ | Facilitator | Post-training | |
| Preparedness to deliver smalltalk: 5 items (e.g. How confident do you feel to be able to communicate the parenting strategies to parents?) 5-point scale (1 = not at all, 5 = very). Total score 5 to 25 | Facilitator | Post-training | |
| Contextual factors | |||
| Area/population | Census of Population and Housing data (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011) including geographic area (km2), population size and density; number of children 0–4 years; rate of language other than English spoken at home; rate of unemployment; number of households without a motor vehicle | ||
| Neighbourhood disadvantage | Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011) Proportion of children in the ‘developmentally vulnerable’ range (lowest 10% nationally) for language, cognitive and general knowledge, Australian Early Development Census (AEDC 2015) |
||
aWeekly = recorded by facilitator at end of each group session; Baseline (T = 0); Post = after program completion (T = 12 weeks); Pre/post-training = immediately before/after facilitator training