Increasing Parental Self-Efficacy and Parenting Practices in Urban American Indian Parents: Pilot Results From a Culturally Tailored Parenting Curriculum

Background and Purpose: American Indian youth residing in urban areas face concerning health disparities similar to their reservation-based counterparts such as high risk and severity of substance use, and in comparison to non-Hispanic Whites are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors. Protective factors which mitigate risky behaviors among urban American Indian youth include feeling connected to family and supportive communication with adult family members. The goal of this study is to strengthen protective factors against risky behaviors for urban American Indian youth through a culturally adapted parenting intervention that focuses on family functioning and parent-child communication. An adapted parenting curriculum, Parenting in 2 Worlds (P2W), was developed and pilot tested through community-based participatory research in three urban American Indian communities in Arizona. This analysis of pilot data reports on the immediate outcomes of the parenting intervention.

Methods: Data come from 73 participants who in 2012 received the pilot version of P2W and had a matched pre-/post-survey. P2W is a 10-workshop program administered twice a week for five weeks by American Indian community facilitators. Pre-surveys were administered during Workshop 1, and post-surveys administered five weeks later during Workshop 10. Participants received an incentive of $15 at the end of each attended workshop. Participant demographics and pre-/post-survey changes on five scales were examined through paired t-tests.

Results: American Indian parents of adolescents ages 10-17 participated in the pilot study (N=73, 69.6% female, 38.0% single, never married, 27.5% high school diploma, 27.5% no diploma, 55.6% earning less than $10,000 annually). Analyzing matched pre-post changes through paired t-tests, urban American Indian parents reported a significant increase in their parental involvement (t=2.80, p <.01), parenting self-agency (t=4.58, p<.001), use of effective discipline (t=2.83, p<.01), and communications with their children about sexual intercourse (t=2.97, p<.01) and safe sex practices (t=3.76, p<.001).

Conclusions: Although the pilot curriculum underwent further adaptation to ensure cultural fit, the results show statistically significant improvements in parenting skills and family functioning and are a promising indication of anticipated results from the randomized control trial using the final adapted version of P2W. These pilot results show P2W is effective at changing various aspects of parenting practices– an important mechanism through which we may expect change in youth risk behavior.