Feasibility and Evaluation of Brief, Mobile-Based Family Strengthening Interventions

Gregory M. Fosco, PhD, Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and the Associate Director of the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center at The Pennsylvania State University, is using an MRI grant to develop a mobile application for the delivery of empirically supported family strengthening modules, which may be a critical break-through in universal family-based prevention efforts.

Parent-adolescent connectedness, parent-adolescent communication and monitoring, and positive parenting practices are key predictors of adolescent developmental outcomes. Developmentally, the transition to adolescence is marked by decreases in each of these three family domains. But in families where these changes are too pronounced or occur too quickly, adolescents are at risk for depression, problem behavior, substance use, and academic decline.

 Family-based prevention programs delivered during middle school have been shown to be efficacious in helping families address these concerns during middle school, yielding reduced risk for depression, reduced school disengagement, and less antisocial behavior years later in high school and young adulthood.

 Universally delivered family strengthening programs have been found to offer great promise for reducing adolescent long-term risk and promoting healthy development. The reach of these family programs is often limited by barriers to engaging these families including conflicting time commitments, transportation and childcare needs. Dr. Fosco’s mobile application addresses these barriers.

His project is developing and evaluating the efficacy of three family strengthening modules that will be implemented on mobile devices. The modules promote positive family relationships, parent-adolescent communication and monitoring, and positive parenting practices.

When implementing these new routines the modules will scaffold parents’ descriptions of the new routines to their child, prompt parents to track child progress in the morning and  reward desirable behavior. Dr. Fosco expects that only a short window of usage will be needed to support family change.

This project is a collaboration among Dr. Fosco and his colleagues, Dr. Benjamin V. Hanrahan and Ms. Carlie Sloan at Penn State.