Summative assessment of qualification program for parents "Familie schafft Chancen"

The project aims at assessing the efficacy of the parents program ‘familY: Eltern bilden; Kinder stärken’, the ‘buddy E.V.’ takes responsibility for. It starts before entry to elementary school and is dedicated to socioeconomic disadvantaged parents. Besides the participants’ satisfaction with the program, the focus lies on its efficacy and sustainability. A pre-post comparison is used to determine the competence development of the participants (training group) and compare it to the control group. The control group is formed by parents who have not participated in the program, but who are as similar as possible to the training group with respect to socioeconomic characteristics.

Therefore, it is a quasi-experimental design with several survey periods. The surveys took place (a) prior to, (b) during and (c) straight after the training as well as (d) 3 months and (e) 12 months after finishing the training.

Topics:

Supporting autonomy in everyday life (encouraging the own child in autonomy with respect to, for example: expenditure of pocket money, choice of TV-program, organization of vacation, style of clothing, leisure activities); parental sensitivity for childish feelings; use of learning opportunities in everyday life (common reflection of read aloud stories; realization of situations where the child can use newly developed skills; attempting to let the child learn in a playful way as much as possible; fast recognition of situations, which arouse the curiosity of the child; letting the child the possibility to ask questions while reading aloud; supporting the child’s development by leaving small tasks to it in everyday life; letting the child the possibility to add ideas while reading a book aloud or looking at a storybook; motivating the child to tell stories from the Kindergarten; showing interest in thoughts of the child; considering the favorite subjects of the child while borrowing or buying a book); encouragement in everyday life* (frequency of different activities with the child); instructional behavior with problems of the child (supporting autonomy and responsivity); ‘parent-focused responsibility’* (parents’ responsibility with respect to supporting the child in school matters); parental self-efficacy with respect to learning support (self-efficacy beliefs of parents in learning situations with the child); parental goal orientation related to school* (importance of achievement orientation and learning orientation of the own child); domestic possibilities for the child of retreating , to pursue different activities*; self-efficacy in parental support and attitude towards the significance of parental support for managing school entry and for learning achievements; emotional and social school experiences of the child (attitude towards school, willingness to make an effort, joy of learning); satisfaction of the parent with the familY-program; subjective use of the familY-program from parental point of view.

Demography: gender of the child; number of people living in the household; number of children; age of child who enters school in summer; age of other children; age of parents (classed); current life situation of the person filling in the questionnaire; birth country of parents; duration of parents’ stay in Germany; graduation of parents in Germany; graduation of parents in a foreign country; vocational education of parents in Germany/foreign country; financial situation; number of books in household; number of children’s books without school books in household; elementary school type the child will attend.

Additionally coded: questionnaire-ID; belonging to control- or training group; parent who filled in the questionnaire (father, mother, both or others).

*: not covered by the third survey wave (short questionnaire).